Indeed, USB on Baby AT motherboards (arguably pre-iMac USB, generally) was just an interesting curiosity and the original owner probably didn't even connect the header.

On early PIIX3 USB was so broken Intel said not to populate the USB header if the PIIX3 chip is A stepping: https://theretroweb.com/chip/documentation/29 … bf939266684.pdf (p. 25)

Maybe you can boot a Slackware 11.0 CD or set of boot floppies, and see if any kernel messages are generated as you connect and disconnect a USB device.

I've used the USB ports on many Socket 7 boards with Intel's VX, TX and HX chipset motherboards with no issues. Is there any mention of USB in the CMOS settings? Sometimes with these early boards there was no BIOS support for USB in the early releases, so I'd make sure that's up to date.

A different OS (an older Linux distro?) that offers USB support could be a way to see if the drive installation/driver itself is an issue - I used to use WinXP on TX systems for older relatives, so it couldn't hurt to increase the RAM and try that to see how the USB ports do. And it is always possible that the USB controller is damaged.

When you say you've checked the USB pinout, have you used a meter to make sure the +5 volt pin matches the manual/documentation? From the photo it appears to be an eight pin header, I always double check those with a meter.

Might be USB 1.0 which is only for HID devices afaik. You need USB 1.1.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2026-05-16, 20:41:

Might be USB 1.0 which is only for HID devices afaik. You need USB 1.1.

afaik 1.0 never came out and nobody knows what was changed other than some documentation clarifications 😀
Wikipedia used to claim 12Mbit didnt exist priot to 1.1 but thats incorrect. It was the other way around. USB 0.9 spec had _only_ 12Mbit speed defined, 1.0 added low speed mode for cheap HID devices https://www.os2museum.com/wp/usb-0-9/

Repo Man11 wrote on 2026-05-16, 20:32:

I've used the USB ports on many Socket 7 boards with Intel's VX, TX and HX chipset motherboards with no issues. Is there any mention of USB in the CMOS settings? Sometimes with these early boards there was no BIOS support for USB in the early releases, so I'd make sure that's up to date.

A different OS (an older Linux distro?) that offers USB support could be a way to see if the drive installation/driver itself is an issue - I used to use WinXP on TX systems for older relatives, so it couldn't hurt to increase the RAM and try that to see how the USB ports do. And it is always possible that the USB controller is damaged.

When you say you've checked the USB pinout, have you used a meter to make sure the +5 volt pin matches the manual/documentation? From the photo it appears to be an eight pin header, I always double check those with a meter.

Yes, in the bios there's an option for enabling/disabling the usb controller. And no, I didn't measured with a meter, but as I mentoined it does charge my phone.
Maybe I'll go for a usb 2.0 pci card. Is that could be a valid option for a system like this?

usb 2.0 MASSIVELY slow downs computers with weak CPUs. We are talking something like 20% for a card just sitting in a PCI slot, more if unused pendrive is plugged in.

USB Devices heavily slow down my Pentium III
Which USB 2.0 cards for old motherboards

USB 1.1 will also reduce benchmark scores on fast socket 3 systems. I've documented this somewhere. From memory, it was around a 10% hit, even without anything connected to the USB port. For USB 2.0, anything under a PII or AMD K6-III-500, I tend to stick with USB 1.1.

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-05-17, 13:35:

usb 2.0 MASSIVELY slow downs computers with weak CPUs. We are talking something like 20% for a card just sitting in a PCI slot, more if unused pendrive is plugged in.

USB Devices heavily slow down my Pentium III
Which USB 2.0 cards for old motherboards

And what about an usb 1.1 pci card? Could be used for mass storage purposes, without those slowing issues?

The fact that it can charge a device is a good sign, that means that at least you have some voltage on the +5; but as USB devices don't work, verifying each pin is a basic diagnostic step. This is a typical eight pin header though I don't know for sure that is what your board has (since early USB was the wild west) and I saw no pin out diagram in a skim of the manual at the RetroWeb, so a meter is the only way to be sure.

Frankly no one really used USB for much prior to 2000, due to the negative aspects that are well known. Around 2000, PCs started to become fast enough and USB standard enough to not have the negative aspects as pronounced. So I'm talking about ~1GHz+ machines, and for the most part to everyone here, these are XP machines, and could also have had USB2.0, which is where USB starting being really useful. And by this point, socket 7 was long going out the door.

That's not to say that USB wasn't used. It's that USB on that class of machine today isn't really useful then and not really at all now. Most people then used PS/2 inputs anyway, and sort of preferred even now. The odd duck USB scanner and printer isn't something wants to put up with on a legacy machine. So what is a USB 1.x only machine useful for? The rare machine that only had USB for keyboard and mouse, you'll have to use it. There are a few. It seems like some of this interest for USB on early boards is because people want to use it the same way they do now with all the peripherals that are plentiful versus stuff long since not that common. So to go around to my initial point, USB on these systems were not used like modern USB.

So yes, USB on socket 7 is primitive, especially the early Intel socket 7 that happened to have some USB support. So it's part of the experience on how these systems were used. So whatever the option you are looking to use, it's probably best to use one of the other non-USB options that are more compatible with these systems.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2026-05-17, 15:12:

Frankly no one really used USB for much prior to 2000, due to the negative aspects that are well known. Around 2000, PCs started to become fast enough and USB standard enough to not have the negative aspects as pronounced. So I'm talking about ~1GHz+ machines, and for the most part to everyone here, these are XP machines, and could also have had USB2.0, which is where USB starting being really useful. And by this point, socket 7 was long going out the door.

That's not to say that USB wasn't used. It's that USB on that class of machine today isn't really useful then and not really at all now. Most people then used PS/2 inputs anyway, and sort of preferred even now. The odd duck USB scanner and printer isn't something wants to put up with on a legacy machine. So what is a USB 1.x only machine useful for? The rare machine that only had USB for keyboard and mouse, you'll have to use it. There are a few. It seems like some of this interest for USB on early boards is because people want to use it the same way they do now with all the peripherals that are plentiful versus stuff long since not that common. So to go around to my initial point, USB on these systems were not used like modern USB.

So yes, USB on socket 7 is primitive, especially the early Intel socket 7 that happened to have some USB support. So it's part of the experience on how these systems were used. So whatever the option you are looking to use, it's probably best to use one other the other non-USB options that are more compatible with these systems.

I see what you mean. Actually, the initial reason of my starting question is that I got a nice front usb/audio bay, which is a bit newer than my system, but of course tried to get it to work with the mbo's 8 pin usb-header, which wasn't successful.

Still, using the native ports of the mbo in my celeron 800 mhz machine proved to be a very convenient way of communicating with my modern machine - writing stuff on a slowly-dying cd-rw disc is too painful - so, even if I letting that bay go, still would be nice to use some usb mass storage (even in its slowest form) as a mean of communication device. Well maybe not 100% period correct, but if it'd work, I would give it a try.

Altough it seems that I can buy an OPTi FireLink 82C861 usb 1.1 pci card near my place, from around '98. Could it be a soulution?

When I say "communication" I mean the ability of transferring greater amounts of data between my old and new pc. 😀

the3dfxdude wrote on 2026-05-17, 15:12:

Frankly no one really used USB for much prior to 2000, due to the negative aspects that are well known. Around 2000, PCs started to become fast enough and USB standard enough to not have the negative aspects as pronounced. So I'm talking about ~1GHz+ machines, and for the most part to everyone here, these are XP machines, and could also have had USB2.0, which is where USB starting being really useful. And by this point, socket 7 was long going out the door.

That's not to say that USB wasn't used. It's that USB on that class of machine today isn't really useful then and not really at all now. Most people then used PS/2 inputs anyway, and sort of preferred even now. The odd duck USB scanner and printer isn't something wants to put up with on a legacy machine. So what is a USB 1.x only machine useful for? The rare machine that only had USB for keyboard and mouse, you'll have to use it. There are a few. It seems like some of this interest for USB on early boards is because people want to use it the same way they do now with all the peripherals that are plentiful versus stuff long since not that common. So to go around to my initial point, USB on these systems were not used like modern USB.

So yes, USB on socket 7 is primitive, especially the early Intel socket 7 that happened to have some USB support. So it's part of the experience on how these systems were used. So whatever the option you are looking to use, it's probably best to use one of the other non-USB options that are more compatible with these systems.

I find USB thumb drives to be a very handy thing to use when setting up my Socket 7 machines, and even the lowly PCChips M520 VX motherboard's USB worked fine with Win98. I don't see any reason to discourage the use of them, by far most of the time they work fine.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2026-05-17, 16:17:

I find USB thumb drives to be a very handy thing to use when setting up my Socket 7 machines, and even the lowly PCChips M520 VX motherboard's USB worked fine with Win98. I don't see any reason to discourage the use of them, by far most of the time they work fine.

I didn't discourage him. If it worked, OP wouldn't have asked why it doesn't work. That is not fine. These earliest boards had erratas and no one in 96 were actually using the ports because they had nothing to plug into them. They didn't even come with the slot bracket in the box. And people have been coming by regularly asking this same question about how to use these boards. These were not systems people used thumb sticks on that is what I was trying to say. I think I had used a thumbstick in Win98 by some point very late in its age with a primitive driver (not the backported one) and it aint gonna be what people hope for. But for today given installing Win98 is usually done by copying the setup files to the hard drive, and that installing a nic is alot easier and faster, there are simply other options for storage operation, and he could speak about what he has thought about doing. That is all.

klaymen96 wrote on 2026-05-17, 15:50:

Altough it seems that I can buy an OPTi FireLink 82C861 usb 1.1 pci card near my place, from around '98. Could it be a soulution?

I'm not a fan of sticking in another card you haven't used (and I can't vouch for) without knowing what went wrong, and in doing possibly introducing more trouble as well. As Repo Man said, you can boot a Linux distro and check whether the chipset USB is working on a better driver stack.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2026-05-17, 21:32:

I didn't discourage him. If it worked, OP wouldn't have asked why it doesn't work. That is not fine. These earliest boards had e […]
Show full quote

Repo Man11 wrote on 2026-05-17, 16:17:

I find USB thumb drives to be a very handy thing to use when setting up my Socket 7 machines, and even the lowly PCChips M520 VX motherboard's USB worked fine with Win98. I don't see any reason to discourage the use of them, by far most of the time they work fine.

I didn't discourage him. If it worked, OP wouldn't have asked why it doesn't work. That is not fine. These earliest boards had erratas and no one in 96 were actually using the ports because they had nothing to plug into them. They didn't even come with the slot bracket in the box. And people have been coming by regularly asking this same question about how to use these boards. These were not systems people used thumb sticks on that is what I was trying to say. I think I had used a thumbstick in Win98 by some point very late in its age with a primitive driver (not the backported one) and it aint gonna be what people hope for. But for today given installing Win98 is usually done by copying the setup files to the hard drive, and that installing a nic is alot easier and faster, there are simply other options for storage operation, and he could speak about what he has thought about doing. That is all.

klaymen96 wrote on 2026-05-17, 15:50:

Altough it seems that I can buy an OPTi FireLink 82C861 usb 1.1 pci card near my place, from around '98. Could it be a soulution?

I'm not a fan of sticking in another card you haven't used (and I can't vouch for) without knowing what went wrong, and in doing possibly introducing more trouble as well. As Repo Man said, you can boot a Linux distro and check whether the chipset USB is working on a better driver stack.

It's all right, I absolutely do not feel offended or discouraged, understood your point. Since that pci 1.1 card is quite cheap, maybe giving it a try. Or there is CF as an alternative, but for now I'd like to examine this usb-situation a bit more. If something changes for the better, I'll report the results.