With and without my usb 2.0 card

Which card should I buy to replace it?

I have a 3.0 card but that won’t work in win ME right?

Sedrosken wrote on 2021-03-23, 08:56:

Look at making a floppy with the plop bootloader on it. It worked just fine on my PPro machine with a USB card when I still had it.

I didn't know of that one.. It does sorta work, but can't actually boot anything from any of the USB controllers I've tried:
- Asus XP55T2P4 onboard USB
- D-Link DU-520 (NEC based, 5 ports) on a Gigabyte GA-586DX

What's even crazier is that the latter causes interrupt storms if I try to boot e.g. FreeBSD (over the network) while the card is installed, causing the device to shut down and the comptuer to lock up.

Plop seems useful for other purposes though, so it has a permanent spot in my toolchest now. Thanks!
Also tried the new (plop v6) loader, that one seems to have serious issues still :)

found a couple of these

one is silicon image sil0673b no drivers found online, like if the card never existed.

the other one is ali m5273

how do you install those cards on windows95 and win 3.1?

I am using this one on Win98SE but when i plug a flash drive usb stick the system seems to slow down a bit.
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B001628FXA/ref=cm_sw … ZZTVP11V95WRQ3H

I have had success with SiS USB 2.0 chipsets on AMD K6-2 boards.

betamax80 wrote on 2021-04-10, 01:55:

I have had success with SiS USB 2.0 chipsets on AMD K6-2 boards.

That’s super socket 7 right? Not a add in card?

I’m assuming that’s what you mean by chipsets just hoping I misunderstood, because I’m looking for a usb2 card that won’t slow down my 430tx board

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-04-12, 17:11:

betamax80 wrote on 2021-04-10, 01:55:

I have had success with SiS USB 2.0 chipsets on AMD K6-2 boards.

That’s super socket 7 right? Not a add in card?

I’m assuming that’s what you mean by chipsets just hoping I misunderstood, because I’m looking for a usb2 card that won’t slow down my 430tx board

Could you add which chipsets you've already tested? or summarize it as an update to the first post.

swaaye wrote on 2014-04-27, 17:29:

I just want to use it for storage. USB 1.1 is so slow. Can you guys post photos of your cards that do work on 1997-1999 boards?

The card that I have is some ultra cheapie with a VIA VT6212L but it simply doesn't work on chipsets before 2000-2001. My guess is the controller isn't the problem, the card's construction is.

that card looks exactly like the one i just bought to get some more usb ports on my main computer (haswell i7) - works out of the box and without problems on linux, but are there any win 9x drivers for this card?

if there are, i'd like to get another one and put it in my pentium 3 (440BX chipset AFAIK)

currently, i'm using this 2 port card in this pentium 3 that i pulled out of an old G3 power mac (the original transparent white/blue model)

it works out of the box with win98SE, ME and up - no driver hunting required and no issues so far

as you can see in the picture, the writing on the silk screen says "HU-32C0"
and the writing on the chip says:

1CMD
20670B-400
3KAI6

Puts in a 8TB wd external installs SAS driver built in usb1 didn't work too big sas drive shows working properly too 🤣
Puts VIA chip PCI card advertised as usb 2 discovers there was a reason for white tongue ports - fake usb2
Awaits NEC USB 2 card with black tongue usb ports - the genuine article
seems everything i throw at built in USB 1 works 32gb - 64gb flash drives apparently 1tb is a hard limit for most externals on usb 1
I was dissapointed with the eBay VIA usb2 *cough 1 cough* it worked properly but it was so slow

weedeewee wrote on 2021-04-12, 17:21:

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-04-12, 17:11:

betamax80 wrote on 2021-04-10, 01:55:

I have had success with SiS USB 2.0 chipsets on AMD K6-2 boards.

That’s super socket 7 right? Not a add in card?

I’m assuming that’s what you mean by chipsets just hoping I misunderstood, because I’m looking for a usb2 card that won’t slow down my 430tx board

Could you add which chipsets you've already tested? or summarize it as an update to the first post.

No no, I'm talking about the controller chip on the PCI card.

betamax80 wrote on 2021-04-27, 14:49:

weedeewee wrote on 2021-04-12, 17:21:

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-04-12, 17:11:

That’s super socket 7 right? Not a add in card?

I’m assuming that’s what you mean by chipsets just hoping I misunderstood, because I’m looking for a usb2 card that won’t slow down my 430tx board

Could you add which chipsets you've already tested? or summarize it as an update to the first post.

No no, I'm talking about the controller chip on the PCI card.

I must've been falling asleep when I wrote that, anyway.
@betamax80 Could you take a photo of the card, with the chiplabel readable. It seems my google fu isn't up to snuf today.

Honestly I'm struggling to find it now - I know that I installed it on my Athlon XP based system which is an ASrock board using a Mirage 1 chipset.
I have also spied (and purchased) a card with an ALi chipset which might be useful.
I guess what I'm saying is that when mixing and matching has been problematic I try to go to the same chipset provider as that which provided the northbridge / southbridge on the board.
I'm pretty sure that I had to get my SiS based PCI card second-hand which I rarely do.

Any comment on USB cards for old 486 systems? The one I have now works, sort of. I can use a flash drive briefly and copy a few files back and forth, but it is really unstable in Windows 98SE and Win2000. I have the Opti PCI chipset.

I have an USB 2.0 card with chip NEC D720100AGM. It has 2 USB 2.0 ports. I managed to find a driver for Windows 98SE, but unfortunately the card requires 3 ! IRQs to be fully operational. One IRQ is used by the controller itself and then further 2 are needed (it seems one for each port). It also seems to require IRQ 5 (commonly used for sound cards). This basically kills the card as I need a sound card, network card and graphics card all consuming an IRQ. LPT / COM ports can be disabled to get more free IRQs, but the IRQ 5 issue cannot be resolved it seems. So beware an USB card could end up using more IRQs than you would expect.

AlexZ wrote on 2021-05-28, 19:01:

I have an USB 2.0 card with chip NEC D720100AGM. It has 2 USB 2.0 ports. I managed to find a driver for Windows 98SE, but unfortunately the card requires 3 ! IRQs to be fully operational. One IRQ is used by the controller itself and then further 2 are needed (it seems one for each port). It also seems to require IRQ 5 (commonly used for sound cards). This basically kills the card as I need a sound card, network card and graphics card all consuming an IRQ. LPT / COM ports can be disabled to get more free IRQs, but the IRQ 5 issue cannot be resolved it seems. So beware an USB card could end up using more IRQs than you would expect.

the pci bus has only four IRQ lines, in contrast to isa which has like twelve or thirteen available, though on old boards, the pci irqs get linked to the isa irq numbering...
consider the pci bus, the first slot will have IRQs numbered as ABCD, the second BCDA, the third, CDAB, the fourth DABC, the fifth, depends on the board design, could be the same as the first, or the fourth or whatever combo the designer found to be funny.
If you can set the PCI IRQs in the bios, set them all to the same irq. normally PCI cards can do IRQ sharing.
if one of your pci cards needs a separate irq you'll have to figure out which three pci irqs (ABCD?) the usb2 card uses, set the one it doesn't use differently, and figure out which pci slot has that one as first IRQ, since that will most often be the one that the card uses.

This way, if the bios and the drivers permit it, you can have only two irqs for the pci slots in use whilst still using all four pci slots.

Do note that a number of the PCI USB 2.0 cards that have more than 2 ports (for example the very obtainable StarTech card with 5 external, 2 external) actually have a USB Hub chip on board - so the card is going to be 2 devices - a USB 2.0 controller and a USB Hub. This may have an impact on what devices you can connect to certain ports. I have tried to keep a bit of a stock of the USB 2.0 + FireWire 400 cards, for a bit of ultimate experience - as in the similar reason that I have an internal Zip!250 drive in my major Win98 system. nUSB36e handles the software side of this no problem.

I think that the issue for 486 systems is that that USB is a host-based -protocol, and always was. Any early USB 0.9 or 1.0 controllers are next-to-useless beyond being PS/2 port alternatives.
This was the reason for the excitment and (percieved) supremacy of FireWire as it was supposed to use a hardware stack on the controller.

I would probably rely on USB2 for the minimum spec of super socket 7 with an AMD k6 for reliable use.
As far as 486? socket 3??? I'd settle for 100mbit LAN for data transfers, I mean, considering a null modem cable brings the 486 win95 desktop down to a crawl is a great tell tale sign that thing will be nasty with USB1. All USB uses a percentage of cpu to run and thats probably most of the 486 bandwidth. given most up to 44mhz fsb
So lets firewire away 486 doom game machines!

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-20, 13:41:

I would probably rely on USB2 for the minimum spec of super socket 7 with an AMD k6 for reliable use.
As far as 486? socket 3??? I'd settle for 100mbit LAN for data transfers, I mean, considering a null modem cable brings the 486 win95 desktop down to a crawl is a great tell tale sign that thing will be nasty with USB1. All USB uses a percentage of cpu to run and thats probably most of the 486 bandwidth. given most up to 44mhz fsb
So lets firewire away 486 doom game machines!

I mostly wanted USB support on my socket 3 system for thumb drive support, so much easier to transfer files that way.

The card I use now works but often locks up the system.

chublord wrote on 2021-07-22, 18:25:

I mostly wanted USB support on my socket 3 system for thumb drive support, so much easier to transfer files that way.

A CF to IDE adapter is another option.

You don't have to use it as your primary hard drive, if you don't want to. It can just serve as an easily accessible secondary device which can be pulled out and hooked up to a modern computer as needed.