USB PCI card question

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USB PCI card question

Postby aholt » Wed May 10, 2017 3:45 am

Hi all,

I am trying to get USB capabilities on a very old machine. I first purchased an old 1.1 USB PCI card and discovered that the OHCI chipset was not compatible with Bret's drivers. I am looking for a second card, however, I am not certain of the controllers in many of them.

Would this card be compatible with Bret's drivers?
StarTech.com 7 Port PCI USB Card Adapter PCIUSB7: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Por ... B002VY53ZK
It looks like it has two UHCI controllers and one EHCI controller (Vectro VT6212L).

If not, could you direct me towards one that would be compatible?

Sincerely,
Dazed & Confused
aholt
 
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Re: USB PCI card question

Postby Bret » Thu May 11, 2017 4:02 am

Yes, that one should work. I've seen cards that said they were UHCI when they were actually OHCI, so you need to be careful about it. The way to really tell is to look at the manufacturer of the large chip that's on the card. If you zoom in on the picture, you'll see that the chip is manufactured by Via Technologies (you can see the VIA logo on the chip). AFAIK, the only manufacturers that ever made UHCI are Intel and Via. Also AFAIK, Intel chips never got used on external PCI cards -- they were always embedded on the motherboard. I could be wrong about that, though. Via chips are almost always used on external cards, though I've seen a few of them on motherboards.

Also, newer cards may not have UHCI at all even with a Via chipset -- they may only have EHCI (for USB 2) and/or XHCI (for USB 3). It's possible to do that by having a USB Hub integrated onto the card instead of just having the USB host controller. The Hub "translates" the low- and full-speed transactions that would normally go to a UHCI or OHCI controller so that the high-speed (EHCI) or super-speed (XCHI) can process them appropriately. It's actually very common on newer computers to just have USB 2/3 host controllers and integrated hubs on the motherboard and not have any UHCI or OHCI controllers at all. I don't know if external cards are actually built that way nowadays (I haven't bought a USB card in a long time), but it is possible.
Bret
 
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Location: Rio Rancho, NM

Re: USB PCI card question

Postby aholt » Thu May 11, 2017 6:17 am

Okay, that is great news. I was originally thinking that I would need the oldest and slowest card and ended up getting a D-LINK 1.1 PCI card with the OHCI chipset.

I'll pick up the Startech card when I can and give it a go.

Thanks a lot, Bret.
aholt
 
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Joined: Wed May 10, 2017 3:10 am

Re: USB PCI card question

Postby aholt » Fri May 12, 2017 3:41 am

I was able to get the PCI card in question to work with FreeDOS 1.2.

To those interested in the process:

At first, it detected the PCI card but the USB drive would not mount. The drive would just fail upon reading.

After running USBHOSTS, I found that the UHCI controllers were IRQ9 and IRQ10. The EHCI controller was assigned to IRQ11.

Therefore, I was able to see the flash drive as G: after the following:
Code: Select all
USBUHCI /disablelegacy /disableother /irq9
USBDRIVES /Ltr:G


However, it was abysmally slow just to check the contents of the drive.

I found that regardless of which /X:# combinations, it was still too slow.

However, after checking another forum post about latency issues I discovered that if I booted into safe mode (option 4, with drivers), the speed issue disappeared.

My final solution was:
Code: Select all
USBUHCI /disablelegacy /disableother /irq9
USBDRIVES /X:64 /Ltr:G


Now it is working great, thanks again Bret for the advice and of course for these drivers. I tested it with two flash drives (1 4GB Kingston and one 32 GB misc drive with FAT32).
aholt
 
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