neither of those are usb controllers . edited due to previous commenter being spam & being banned. 😀

fillosaurus wrote on 2024-02-20, 06:54:

Had some trouble with VIA, none with NEC. Ironically, VIA USB 2.0 with VIA chipsets.

UPDATE:
On my current K7 build (slot A Athlon 700 2nd gen, ASUS K7M motherboard with AMD 760+VIA 686A) one of my VIA USB 2.0 cards works perfectly; a very cheap (I mean, it costed me nothing) Gembird with 4 external and 2 internal ports.
I had trouble with another card (cant't find it now, haven't use it in years), 4 external 1 internal port, same chipset, both on a Zida Tomato with VIA chipset (693+596). I put a NEC card and everything went smooth.

i just built a new (to me) 486 build and used NEC USB2 card from Amazon (UK). On Win98SE and NT4, i have it working ok on both systems (using it for mouse... i have no serial mouse, MB does not have PS2 connector). Getting this USB card to use with USB mouse was way cheaper than trying to score serial mouse or PS2 mouse solution...

MyJules wrote on 2024-03-24, 11:29:

i just built a new (to me) 486 build and used NEC USB2 card from Amazon (UK). On Win98SE and NT4, i have it working ok on both systems (using it for mouse... i have no serial mouse, MB does not have PS2 connector). Getting this USB card to use with USB mouse was way cheaper than trying to score serial mouse or PS2 mouse solution...

Have you checked performance with and without it installed?

A 486 would do better with a USB 1.1 card, if you're only using it for mouse support. You can also get a serial expansion card.

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-03-24, 23:33:

A 486 would do better with a USB 1.1 card, if you're only using it for mouse support. You can also get a serial expansion card.

Is there a USB 1.1 card that you would recommend? D-Link DSB-500 ?

I do not. I've only used onboard ones.

After some experimenting I also came to the conclusion that using an internal hub off the onboard was the best way to add more ports.

Re: Adding more usb ports to old motherboards without using a card

However if the board doesn’t have them, a 1.1 card would be something to try if ps/2/serial isn’t an option.

3.0 cards do exist but only have drivers for windows 7 if I recall correctly

2.0 cards are going to probably slow the system down.

1.1/1.0 cards may work as intended try some benchmarks and see.

Sphere478 wrote on 2024-03-24, 21:53:

MyJules wrote on 2024-03-24, 11:29:

i just built a new (to me) 486 build and used NEC USB2 card from Amazon (UK). On Win98SE and NT4, i have it working ok on both systems (using it for mouse... i have no serial mouse, MB does not have PS2 connector). Getting this USB card to use with USB mouse was way cheaper than trying to score serial mouse or PS2 mouse solution...

Have you checked performance with and without it installed?

it's not like i play game on this machine but using NT4, i did not notice any difference in perf per se. I can play pinball fine and it's like how i remember back then (got 486 100Mhz, 20MB RAM).

swaaye wrote on 2014-04-27, 04:36:

What cards have you guys used that work reliably on old boards? I have a card with a VIA controller and it isn't even detected by 440BX or AMD 750. It does work on newer chipsets like KT266 though.

Stupid question... Why did you want to connect this?

I have two SS7 systems (VIA, ALI), and no proper solution for USB 2.0 yet.
Do all cards from different providers (VIA, NEC, ALI) slow down the system? I have a VIA card here that I was able to throttle to USB 1.1 by withholding a driver. It's very slow, but in full USB 2.0 mode the system slows down a lot. Is this normal, or is it perhaps due to Windows 98 in general? What would be the best solution?

kaiser77_1982 wrote on 2024-04-26, 09:14:

swaaye wrote on 2014-04-27, 04:36:

What cards have you guys used that work reliably on old boards? I have a card with a VIA controller and it isn't even detected by 440BX or AMD 750. It does work on newer chipsets like KT266 though.

Stupid question... Why did you want to connect this?

For speedy USB 2.0 access to a flash drive.

But I have stopped using USB 2.0 with Win9x. It tends to cause problems. I now typically use FTP to access remote files.

If you manage to get USB 2.0 working, I have only found it to be stable when used as a fixed disk. Stopping the device and removing it has always been unstable for me. It seems to work just fine with the onboard USB 1.1 ports, so I'm not certain what the issue is, exactly.

swaaye wrote on 2024-04-26, 18:41:

kaiser77_1982 wrote on 2024-04-26, 09:14:

swaaye wrote on 2014-04-27, 04:36:

What cards have you guys used that work reliably on old boards? I have a card with a VIA controller and it isn't even detected by 440BX or AMD 750. It does work on newer chipsets like KT266 though.

Stupid question... Why did you want to connect this?

For speedy USB 2.0 access to a flash drive.

But I have stopped using USB 2.0 with Win9x. It tends to cause problems. I now typically use FTP to access remote files.

Try to transfer 1 GB or so using USB 1.1 😉

swaaye wrote on 2024-04-26, 18:41:

kaiser77_1982 wrote on 2024-04-26, 09:14:

swaaye wrote on 2014-04-27, 04:36:

What cards have you guys used that work reliably on old boards? I have a card with a VIA controller and it isn't even detected by 440BX or AMD 750. It does work on newer chipsets like KT266 though.

Stupid question... Why did you want to connect this?

For speedy USB 2.0 access to a flash drive.

But I have stopped using USB 2.0 with Win9x. It tends to cause problems. I now typically use FTP to access remote files.

Since it's on the network anyway, a far easier option is just CIFS / SMB. Share the drive in Windows 98 SE much like you would on a modern Windows machine. Windows 10 can still talk to them, and it can easily saturate whatever drive interface you have in there, and is far less fiddly than FTP to connect, as you can just mount it on your modern machine.

You can also setup a modern and robust NAS storage device using Linux and share it with vintage machines via Samba (SMB). That's how I do it.

I use ZFS, so I have the safety and security of bit rot protection and RAID redundancy.

I probably shouldn't have responded to the person who quoted a post I made more than 10 years ago. 😀

SMB, Windows or SAMBA, and FTP work well. Whatever you feel like doing. I like Core FTP Lite for the FTP approach. Someone suggested it on here many years back. Windows built in FTP server works fine.

The only issue you may encounter with FTP is the server using a newer, unsupported encryption protocol. Basic unencrypted FTP access is fine on a local network, and may even be faster without the overhead of encryption and decryption on older CPUs.

Some FTP clients also have the ability to split files into several parts for faster downloads, if the server supports multiple simultaneous connections.