adding USB extension to older mobo - question

[gmccall]

Thanks M1pilot. I think I have seen this item at a local Babbages, but since I couldn't actually open the package to get to the instructions, I didn't know if it would work with my mobo. I do remember that it had 2 sets of 5-pin female plugs for connection. May have to give it a try and see what happens.

Thanks again.

[Peter M]

USB actually only needs four pins per channel (+5V, GND, data+, data-), the fifth is unused.

Before you give the headers a try, first see if you can (a) enable the USB controller in BIOS and (b) your operating system accepts it.

There have been quite a few mainboards with early pre-1.0 USB controllers that actually are useless, and where later BIOS releases quietly had the USB feature disappear - yet the physical headers are still there ...

Regards, Peter

[M1pilot]

Right....these have a 5 pin female connector, but depending on the M/B, they're not necessarily all used. My M/B (VA503+) also has 2, 4-pin pinouts, and the Belkin product worked fine. Good luck.

-M1pilot

[Susan]

If you don't have any luck, you could try one of the PCI cards that are on the market right now. They give you 2 USB ports, WIN98 recognizes them, installs the drivers for you and they work.

[gmccall]

Thank you very much, everyone! I'll try enabling the USB in Bios and see if Windows accepts it. If so, I'm in business. If not, I'll look into buying one of those PCI cards Susan spoke of (I really need to break down and upgrade this aging system...)

Once again, thanks to all.

[gmccall]

I'm thinking about adding a USB to mobo extension, but have a question. I have two rows of 4 pins (side by side) for adding the USB, but all I can find so far are extensions with 2 sets of 5 pin connectors or one long (single row) 8 pin connector....

Any help would be greatly appreciated on this. Thanks.

[M1pilot]

Belkin sells a universal two port cable and expansion slot assembly that is cheap and readily available at most computer stores. It comes with an excellent set of instructions so that you get the pinouts on the M/B correctly connected to the cable connector. The part no. is F3U001.

-M1pilot


[This message has been edited by M1pilot (edited 04-12-2000).]

[Peter M]

In case you have to buy a PCI USB card, be aware of a few things:

* USB keyboards won't work in DOS when they are connected to an offboard USB controller.

* Epox has a very tempting looking UDMA66/USB combo card. However, this is _NOT_ a USB controller, it's a hub (meaning it replicates ports from a working onboard USB).

* Get a PCI USB card with a chip from a major manufacturer on it, in order to make sure Windows supports it without problems. Best pick would be to get one with a VIA chip on, as their standalone USB chip is functionally identical to what they integrate into their widespread mainboard chipsets.

Regards, Peter

[Symes]

Peter,

Isn't there a danger that a VIA chipset on a PCI expansion card would suffer from the 'incompatibilities' that seem to be reported with certain peripherals/VIA chipset motherboard combos?

Symes.

[Peter M]

These incompatibilities (USB devices that are connected at powerup won't be detected by Windows) are more and more looking like they actually are caused by the Windows USB controller driver for UHCI type chips - VIA's and Intel's USB controllers happen to have that problem, and at the same time happen to be UHCI type. ALi and SiS controllers, both OHCI type, don't.

Of course you'll see the same problem with a separate VIA USB controller as you see with the same functional thing integrated into a mainboard chipset. But as it's most likely not a hardware problem (why does W2K work here?) there should soon be a fix from MS. (Isn't there already?)

Regards, Peter