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Which USB 2.0 cards for old motherboards

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Reply 140 of 382, by gedbag

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Has anyone ever had trouble with NEC chipset USB 2.0 cards? I recently acquired one for my PIII system but it just wrecks stability. Instant reboot when I plug in a USB drive but also random reboots if I don't. My PCI slots are pretty much all full and I wonder if it's just too much with the added USB 2.0 card. I've read some stuff regarding issues when using a USB 2.0 card and a SB Live! at the same time. Is there something to that?

Reply 142 of 382, by gedbag

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Been trying a bunch of drivers yesterday and I didn't get anywhere unfortunately. It either freezes the PC immediately or some other card stops working and the PC starts freezing later on. I think I'll just give up and use network shares, since they are pretty much the same speed.

Reply 144 of 382, by gedbag

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It's an Asus TUSL2-C with Intel 815EP chipset. The USB 2.0 card is an Adaptec AUA-4000C. Honestly with the way it behaves (freezes the system anytime it's asked to do anything) I wouldn't rule out a defective card.

Reply 146 of 382, by Cosmic

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Another +1 for NEC chips. I picked up this SiiG branded card today. USB 2.0 works fine under Windows 98 (NUSB36E.EXE) and OpenBSD 7.0.

Attached are benches against the onboard USB 1.0 VIA chipset (FIC VA-503+), K6-2 500MHz, using my fastest Sandisk Extreme USB 3.0 USB drive. It's about 0.9 MB/s vs 7.5 MB/s. One of the devices shows up with the multimedia icon, I thought that was interesting.

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Socket 3: UMC UM8498 | DX2-66 SX955 WB | 32MB FPM | GD5426 VLB | Win3.1/95
Super Socket 7: MVP3 | 600MHz K6-III+ | 256MB SDRAM | MX440 AGP | 98SE/NT4
Slot 1: 440BX | 1300MHz PIII-S SL5XL | 384MB ECC Reg | Quadro FX500 AGP | XP SP3

Reply 148 of 382, by tpapic

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smeezekitty wrote on 2014-04-27, 07:58:
swaaye wrote:

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.

I am surprised even on my 486 board both opti 82c261 and VIA vt83c572 are both picked up. I cannot verify functionality because Win95 has terrible USB support
but once I upgrade the RAM I can test it. A P2/P3 era chipset should have no problems with USB cards

Hi, for DOS 6.22, there are some drivers for usb hub, usb keyboard, usb mouse and usb pendrive / storage devices,
it´s surreal using the good old norton commander with the F: usb drive!!!
slow, ....but works

Reply 149 of 382, by maverick85

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i used an nec board on my 440bx. flawless
NEC D720101

ASRock 98
Win98SE Desktop
ASRock
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz
1 x 512MB 667 MHz DDR2
Soundblaster SB0100 + Altec Lansing ADA885
ATi Radeon X800XT 256MB GDDR3
1 x SATA 120GB HDD
1 x SATA DVD-RW

Reply 150 of 382, by SolidSonicTH

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I managed to use an Ultra UM5273A-20 six-port (4x external, 2x internal) card and Windows 98 found all the drivers it needed from the CD. It uses some sort of Nvidia chipset on the card itself. I needed the internal ports to hook up an NZXT header hub and connect my case USBs.

Originally I tried using StarTech's PCIUSB7 card with four external, one internal, and a set of headers on the card (which would allow me to go directly from the hub to the card without having to adapt them into type A connectors) for a total of 7 ports but it had trouble and didn't behave the wanted (even with the drivers I found on StarTech's site and despite the fact they support 9x). According to the spec sheet it uses the VT6212 chipset from Via so...I dunno, maybe that's not that 9x compatible after all.

Reply 151 of 382, by Sphere478

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Adding More USB Ports to Retro Motherboards

By the way, I thought I had posted this but I don’t see it.

this is what I am doing these days, I like it because it gives me all the ports that I need and doesn’t slow the system down

Sphere's PCB projects.
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Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
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SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
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Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 153 of 382, by Sphere478

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TonyStark wrote on 2022-07-22, 00:37:

VIA controllers do not work with SS7 systems at all ?

Super glitchy has been my experience on the combo card I have

Sphere's PCB projects.
-
Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 154 of 382, by jbenam

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TonyStark wrote on 2022-07-22, 00:37:

VIA controllers do not work with SS7 systems at all ?

I had a bog-standard VIA card which was pretty stable on my P5A. I now have a NEC card in there and I can't see differences - didn't make any performance tests, though.

Reply 155 of 382, by RaiderOfLostVoodoo

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TonyStark wrote on 2022-07-22, 00:37:

VIA controllers do not work with SS7 systems at all ?

I have an USB card from VIA which works fine on my DFI K6XV3+/66 (VIA MVP3 chipset).
It's just super slow. The NEC cards I got are much faster.
I posted benchmarks of both here in this thread a few months ago.

Reply 156 of 382, by lti

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I didn't know that these NEC controllers had five ports until I decided to look up the datasheets today. I thought these controllers only had four ports, so I was avoiding the 5-port cards.

The VIA VT6212 card I have seemed to work on a socket 7 motherboard with an SiS 5598 chipset, but I didn't use it very long because the CPU usage was too high. Transfer rates to a flash drive were actually slower than the onboard USB 1.0 ports, even with a K6-2/500 (because Compaq decided to support K6-2s on that motherboard for some reason).

Reply 157 of 382, by Repo Man11

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There was a recent thread that detailed the performance hit that a Pentium 3 system had with a USB 2.0 card, and that got me thinking about my "Weak" Pentium 4 system. Amptron M930, 2.8/533/512 P4, SiS 645, one gig of DDR @ 266 MHz, a Radeon 9800 SE with Omega drivers unlocking the extra four pipelines, and Win98SE.

This system had an Nvidia two port USB 2.0 card in it when I rescued it from a junkpile, but I wanted a USB 2.0 card that had front USB ports, and I finally found one. So I installed the NEC card for the front ports, but left the Nvidia one installed as well. I decided to test it with several benchmarks with both USB cards, neither, and just the NEC card. Removing the Nvidia card boosted the 3D 2000 score by about 400 points, 3D 2001 by about 300, and Aquamark increased by over 1,000 points. The system tested the same with the NEC card installed as it did when it was removed. So the Nvidia card is not going back in this machine.

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Reply 158 of 382, by Sphere478

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It’s crazy. These usb 2.0 cards are cancer for retro systems. Imagine all the lag we could have avoided back in the day 🤣

Sphere's PCB projects.
-
Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 159 of 382, by slivercr

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They are useful for occasional file transfers though, and Disabling it in the Device Manager restores the performance.

I'd rather Enable/Disable the device than transfer files over USB1 speeds 🤷

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