Linux kernel 4.4.0-203
Yes, the Renesas chip works fine if using a PCI-E card, just not on the conventional PCI card. It is probably unable to find the bridge chip.

Feipoa, do you have a startech usb3.0 to pci card?

If you really need me to I can do some tests on a core 2 quad between a startech pci usb3 and a nec usb2 but I’ll have to take apart three computers and install some drivers and stuff. And I can’t at the moment. If it’s important to you I can though.

But it seems on a slow system like my socket 7 it doesn’t seem to be all that practical. Unless you are running a more modern OS than 9x/ME and even at that the card sometimes causes issues for instance it hangs debian jessie install. The usb2.0 cards are sometimes just easier. But I understand maximum effort builds and mods for sure if that’s what you’re going for.

Lemme know if you haven’t found your answers in a few days when I am around the systems I can do a few tests for ya.

Ps, it would be cool if someone with 66mhz pci did the test for ya.

feipoa wrote on 2021-03-12, 21:59:

Linux kernel 4.4.0-203
Yes, the Renesas chip works fine if using a PCI-E card, just not on the conventional PCI card. It is probably unable to find the bridge chip.

You didn't say which motherboard... I ask because I recently found out, from experience and someone on the board telling me the Asus P5A doesn't have 3v3 on the PCI bus... which the silly PCIe bridge, that I wanted to use, needs to work since it doesn't have an onboard 5v-3v3 regulator and without power, board no workie and no detectie. 😁

weedeewee wrote on 2021-03-12, 22:25:

feipoa wrote on 2021-03-12, 21:59:

Linux kernel 4.4.0-203
Yes, the Renesas chip works fine if using a PCI-E card, just not on the conventional PCI card. It is probably unable to find the bridge chip.

You didn't say which motherboard... I ask because I recently found out, from experience and someone on the board telling me the Asus P5A doesn't have 3v3 on the PCI bus... which the silly PCIe bridge, that I wanted to use, needs to work since it doesn't have an onboard 5v-3v3 regulator and without power, board no workie and no detectie. :-D

I didn't think it necessary to say which motherboard I used because in my post I had mentioned already:
a) The Startech controller works fine on the same system when booted into XP.
b) The Startech controller has the power connector plugged in.
c) Renesas NEC D720201 PCI-E USB 3.0 cards work fine on this system in Ubuntu.

I haven't yet checked to see if the bridge chip shows up by checking lspci. It probably doesn't find it or doesn't have the drivers for it.

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-03-12, 22:11:

Feipoa, do you have a startech usb3.0 to pci card? […]
Show full quote

Feipoa, do you have a startech usb3.0 to pci card?

If you really need me to I can do some tests on a core 2 quad between a startech pci usb3 and a nec usb2 but I’ll have to take apart three computers and install some drivers and stuff. And I can’t at the moment. If it’s important to you I can though.

But it seems on a slow system like my socket 7 it doesn’t seem to be all that practical. Unless you are running a more modern OS than 9x/ME and even at that the card sometimes causes issues for instance it hangs debian jessie install. The usb2.0 cards are sometimes just easier. But I understand maximum effort builds and mods for sure if that’s what you’re going for.

Lemme know if you haven’t found your answers in a few days when I am around the systems I can do a few tests for ya.

Ps, it would be cool if someone with 66mhz pci did the test for ya.

Did you also not read my post? The very first thing I wrote was:

feipoa wrote on 2021-03-12, 10:57:

I was able to find one of these Startech USB 3.0 conventional PCI cards used for about 1/3 of their advertised price ($34) and t […]
Show full quote

I was able to find one of these Startech USB 3.0 conventional PCI cards used for about 1/3 of their advertised price ($34) and thought I'd give it a go.
.
.
.
Using the Startech PCIUSB3S4 USB 3.0 on a conventional PCI slot, also based on the NEC D720201, transfer speed: 31.2 MegaBytes/Second

Was my post not clear? I did bold the results to make the results stand out from the clutter.

I've already compared it with USB 2.0. Did you see my post? If it must be tested with an NEC USB 2.0 card, I have one of those as well. Is it important to test NEC to NEC? How much faster was NEC at USB 2.0 compared to VIA?

Ubuntu claims my PCI slots support 66 MHz. How do I make them run at 66 MHz?

feipoa wrote on 2021-03-13, 03:17:

I didn't think it necessary to say which motherboard I used because in my post I had mentioned already: a) The Startech controll […]
Show full quote

weedeewee wrote on 2021-03-12, 22:25:

feipoa wrote on 2021-03-12, 21:59:

Linux kernel 4.4.0-203
Yes, the Renesas chip works fine if using a PCI-E card, just not on the conventional PCI card. It is probably unable to find the bridge chip.

You didn't say which motherboard... I ask because I recently found out, from experience and someone on the board telling me the Asus P5A doesn't have 3v3 on the PCI bus... which the silly PCIe bridge, that I wanted to use, needs to work since it doesn't have an onboard 5v-3v3 regulator and without power, board no workie and no detectie. 😁

I didn't think it necessary to say which motherboard I used because in my post I had mentioned already:
a) The Startech controller works fine on the same system when booted into XP.
b) The Startech controller has the power connector plugged in.
c) Renesas NEC D720201 PCI-E USB 3.0 cards work fine on this system in Ubuntu.

I haven't yet checked to see if the bridge chip shows up by checking lspci. It probably doesn't find it or doesn't have the drivers for it.

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-03-12, 22:11:

Feipoa, do you have a startech usb3.0 to pci card? […]
Show full quote

Feipoa, do you have a startech usb3.0 to pci card?

If you really need me to I can do some tests on a core 2 quad between a startech pci usb3 and a nec usb2 but I’ll have to take apart three computers and install some drivers and stuff. And I can’t at the moment. If it’s important to you I can though.

But it seems on a slow system like my socket 7 it doesn’t seem to be all that practical. Unless you are running a more modern OS than 9x/ME and even at that the card sometimes causes issues for instance it hangs debian jessie install. The usb2.0 cards are sometimes just easier. But I understand maximum effort builds and mods for sure if that’s what you’re going for.

Lemme know if you haven’t found your answers in a few days when I am around the systems I can do a few tests for ya.

Ps, it would be cool if someone with 66mhz pci did the test for ya.

Did you also not read my post? The very first thing I wrote was:

feipoa wrote on 2021-03-12, 10:57:

I was able to find one of these Startech USB 3.0 conventional PCI cards used for about 1/3 of their advertised price ($34) and t […]
Show full quote

I was able to find one of these Startech USB 3.0 conventional PCI cards used for about 1/3 of their advertised price ($34) and thought I'd give it a go.
.
.
.
Using the Startech PCIUSB3S4 USB 3.0 on a conventional PCI slot, also based on the NEC D720201, transfer speed: 31.2 MegaBytes/Second

Was my post not clear? I did bold the results to make the results stand out from the clutter.

I've already compared it with USB 2.0. Did you see my post? If it must be tested with an NEC USB 2.0 card, I have one of those as well. Is it important to test NEC to NEC? How much faster was NEC at USB 2.0 compared to VIA?

Ubuntu claims my PCI slots support 66 MHz. How do I make them run at 66 MHz?

Sorry bro, was in a hurry, wanted to make sure I dropped you a offer to help later when I had the time before I forgot to, yeah didn’t have time to read the post yet.

As far as I know you need a motherboard with 66mhz slots. I think they are really only a thing on servers I thought, though I look forward to other’s responses on the subject. Lemme check out the rest of the post. I got a few min now.

Looking the post over now, looks like you have it all handled on the benchmarks,

One final thought, as I’ve said I’ve had some trouble with linux and the card also but my trouble was more the system hanging so you’re better off than I am with it.

One thing I noticed on these adapter chips is that with the m.2 nvme it seemed to be running in some kind of pio mode or whatever you want to call it where commands were routed through the cpu. I wonder if the pci-pcie adapter chip may be breaking the dma or whatever that that controller might usually have native in pcie, I noticed that my m.2 speed was almost directly linked with cpu speed more than anything and on a core 2 quad was only good for about 40mb/sec and on a k6 was kb/sec. So might be interesting to also benchmark your cpu usage. Though without a native pci usb 3.0 alternative the competition is the usb2.0 card. Which you’ve already shown to be slower. So it wouldn’t really matter. Just some thoughts. 😀

feipoa, I guess I missed the part about tested on the the same board. no matter since you say it works on the board, then the only reason why it ain't workin' would be software, ie the linux kernel.
Try a (live cd) version that has a newer kernel.
might just be that it sees the bridge, yet just doesn't bother to look for any devices hanging on the bridge
or it just gets confused since the system you have has pcie native and the bridge you're adding is added on the pci side... try a newer kernel. you might have to compile your own one for this... or upgrade to a newer ubuntu alltogether.

Hi everyone, if memory servrs me well, then..

* USB 3.0 is bi-directional
* USB 3.0 supports DMA, too

These features may also affect performance in a positive way..

PS: What I do like the most about USB 3.xis the higher current that's supported.
This makes power hungry USB 1.x/2 devices running more stable.

I have some additional test results using, both, a noname PCIe-to-PCI bridge adapter and a Startech PCIe-to-PCI bridge adapter. I also tried the Startech USB 3.0 PCI card with kernel 4.15.0 and on another system with 4.4.0 and it still does not function in linux. The lspci terminal function shows the bridge and the NEC USB 3.0 card on the Startech PCI card, but when plugging in a USB HDD nothing shows up.

On my AsRock 939Dual-SATA2 opteron 185 motherboard, using USB 3.x cards in either of the PCIe-to-PCI bridge adapters yielded no visible HDDs attached to the USB port. Linux sees them, but for some reason there is no USB drive shown in the Disks app, meaning there is nothing to mount.

On another computer, an Asus i915GL based board with a 64-bit Prescott P4-3.8 GHz, some combinations of bridge adapter and USB 3.x cards did yield a working USB HDD. For these tests, I am using a Samsung 870 EVO SSD connected to a Ugreen 3.1 gen2 SATA-to-USB adapter. Some base numbers before the numbers of interest.

Internal USB 2.0 ports (intel something):
Read = 40 MB/s
Write = 32 MB/s

Renesas NEC D720201 USB 3.0 card connected to the PCIe port (1 utilised data lane):
Read = 196 MB/s
Write = 161 MB/s

ASM1142 connected to the PCIe port (2 utilised data lanes):
Read = 395 MB/s
Write = 258 MB/s

ASM3142 connected to the PCIe port (2 utilised data lanes):
Read = 388 MB/s
Write = 264 MB/s

when connecting the USB drive to the USB-C port on ASM3142, the results are shockingly low. Why?
Read = 44 MB/s
Write = 40 MB/s

Fresco FL110: Linux doesn't find any HDD when connected

VIA VL805: didn't document the results or didn't test. SCSI2SD software doesn't work with any VIA-based USB 2.0/3.0 controller card I have tried.

Now let's compare the results of the controllers

ASM1142 connected to the the noname PCIe-to-PCI bridge card:
Read = 105 MB/s
Write = 39 MB/s

ASM1142 connected to the the Startech PCIe-to-PCI bridge card: cannot, Startech slot is x1 keyed only

ASM3142 connected to the noname PCIe-to-PCI bridge card: Linux doesn't find an attached HDD

VIA VL805 connected to noname PCIe-to-PCI bridge card:
Read = 104 MB/s
Write = 37 MB/s

VIA VL805 connected to the Startech PCIe-to-PCI bridge card: doesn't work

Renesas NEC D720201 connected to the noname PCIe-to-PCI bridge card:
Read = 101 MB/s
Write = 36 MB/s

So far, all the read/write speeds for a USB 3.x card on the conventional PCI bus are about the same, but the magic combination comes next.

Renesas NEC D720201 connected to the Startech PCIe-to-PCI bridge card:
Read = 115 MB/s
Write - 79 MB/s

If all you care about is the read speed, then it doesn't matter much which USB 3.x card you use on the PCI bridge, but if you want to double you write speed, you need the NEC D720201. What is most interesting is that the PLX bridge chip model on the Startech PCIe-to-PCI bridge card is the same as on Startech's stand-alone USB 3.0 PCI card. The NEC USB 3.0 model is also the same. So why doesn't the Startech stand-alone USB 3.0 PCI card work correctly in Linux, but the NEC w/bridge adapter does?

The natural next step in benchmarking would be to try this combination Startech PCIe-to-PCI bridge card w/NEC D720201 in a motherboard which forces the PCI slot to 66 MHz. How much more performance can we get out of it? Also interesting would be to test the Renesas NEC D720201 USB 3.0 card on a PCI-X slot, but I never bought one of those Startech PCIe-to-PCIx bridge adapters when they were still available. I think they were $200 at their lowest point.

Edit: Unfortunately, that magic combination doesn't work in my As939Dual-Sata2 board. I checked twice. Ubuntu sees the bridge and the USB controller, but no HDD.

feipoa, don't you mean a PCI-to-PCIe bridge card ?
for the keying part... take a dremel and saw the back out of the pcie slot, just the part that stops you from inserting a larger card. 😀

You are probably technically correct in the naming convention, but in my mind at the time of test, the bridge adapter takes a PCIe card (USB in this case) and turns it into a PCI card, so I was calling it a PCIe-to-PCI bridge adapter. You can also look at it the other way - you are taking a conventional PCI slot (on the motherboard) and turning it into a PCIe slot, so PCI-to-PCIe. Perhaps that is the correct way to look at it.

Looking at the Startech website, they would agree with your choice of naming.
PCI-to-PCIe is this: https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pci1pex1
PCIe-to-PCI is this: https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pex1pci1

During my tests, I used this: https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pci1pex1 and this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/384004453029