Hi All
Im trying to find a USB2.0/FIREWIRE pci card that is fully compatable for my beige G3 under OS 9.2.2 and OS X. I know 9.2.2 only supports USB 1.1 so no biggy. will any USB2.0/firewire pci combo card work in my beige G3 or does it have to say Mac OS before it is compatable. I have also herd that some usb20./FW combo cards not playing nicely with video cards and i want to avoid that. i was also reading somewhere about the diffrence about the pci cards with the open host controller are the ones to look for to work good, I am lost on this one.
Thanks for any help
Frank
im not sure if all of them are like this but i have just a generic USB card and it works in both mac and pc. it works fine with os9, however, unless you install os9 with usb support, the keyboard and mouse dont do anything untill then, you have to use the ADB keyboard and mouse. this seems to apply to only machines that never came with USB built in. and even then the mouse wont move untill your half way booted making it seem like it doesnt work at all.
yea im trying to get the combo card so it wont take up another pci slot i was also told that try to stick with a T.I. chipset for the firewire side of the card
I have a few here in use from Syba, and they work very well. They have an ALi M5271 chipset on them and have the following on the card:
Back of the card:
2 Firewire 400 ports
2 USB 2 ports
Top of the card:
1 Firewire 400 port
1 USB 2 port
2 pin headers for 2 USB2 ports (4 total)
Average cost around Raleigh, NC: $25-30
does it fully work in os 9.2.2 i know the usb 2.0 wont work under 9.2.2 but 1.1 will what version's of OS X will it work in
i have also found out if the combo card has the ALI chipset its compatable with the beige G3 well that's what OWC says and someone from another forum said the same
For USB NEC ALI TI and OPTI chipsets are ok in osx and os9 and there are probably other chipsets as well.
I had to install the Applebuilt USB extensions from the USB_DDK_1.5.5f1 to have USB 1.1 support in os9 with my NEC based card.
Also the NEC chip needs an osx driver to enable USB 2 for osx versions before 10.2.8.
VIA USB chipsets are only supported in osx and the via driver is really only for G4's (probably uses altivec).
VIA USB chipsets might be supported in Tiger without the VIA osx driver seeing that Tiger has an inbuilt UHCI driver.
On os9 VIA USB chipsets aren't supported at all.
For Firewire NEC ALI TI or AGERE (Lucent) chipsets are ok in osx and os9.
Ive got an Agere (Lucent) based firewire card that works great in osx and os9.
VIA Firewire chips as far as I can tell have problems with osx.
I've got a VIA USB Firewire combo card and the firewire works in os9 but doesn't work in osx.
My vt6306 chip revision number is 46.
Revision 46 and lower of the vt6306 chip have a bug which misreports the maximum packet size.
Revision 46 and lower of the vt6306 chip work on os9 probably because os9 ignores the maximum packet size and don't work on osx probably because osx doesn't ignore the maximum packet size.
If your revision is above 46 the firewire will probably work in osx.
The VIA USB chips use UHCI.
Some time ago when Apple and Intel weren't buddies VIA took up with the Intel version of USB (UHCI) and Apple didn't support it.
Of course now that Apple and Intel are such great buddies UHCI is supported.
For the iMac Core Duo Apple uses Agere Firewire chips and Intel USB UHCI chips.
The VIA USB chip is a UHCI chip and so is the Intel chip.
UHCI chip drivers are not included with Panther (but are with Tiger) so a UHCI driver is required with Panther or Jaguar.
iMac Core Duo Firewire and USB PCI Devices
ID 11c1:5811 Class 0c00 Address 04:03.0
FireWire (IEEE 1394): Agere Systems FW323 (rev 61)
ID 8086:27c8 Class 0c03 Address 00:29.0
USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
ID 8086:27c9 Class 0c03 Address 00:29.1
USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
ID 8086:27ca Class 0c03 Address 00:29.2
USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
ID 8086:27cb Class 0c03 Address 00:29.3
USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
ID 8086:27cc Class 0c03 Address 00:29.7
USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
ID 8086:2448 Class 0604 Address 00:30.0