PCI Card Compatibility with OS9, USB/FW Combo, Ethernet, Other

[cobalt60]

The machines are a 7300 and a 9600 running OS 9.1

I'd like a USB/FW combo card. Anything to watch out for here? Anyone have experience with these?:

(3x)FireWire & (4x)USB 2.0 Combo PCI Adapter for PC/MAC | eBay

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Adaptec DuoConnect AUA-3020 4x USB 2.0 + 2x FireWire PCI - FREE Shipping | eBay

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Would I need to hunt down drivers for these? At least the first one looks like it has an NEC chip for USB

As for Ethernet; I have read the RTL8169SC is a gigabit chipset that works with OS 9. They're cheap, so if they work well, figure I might as well go gigabit. I think I gathered I'd need to hunt down the driver though, is that true? Would a 100M chip like the RTL8139 work with OS 9 included drivers?

Also looking for ideas for something fun to put in the 2 extra slots in the 9600 (would have SATA Hard Card, GPU, USB/FW, and Ethernet). Is there a combo TV tuner and video capture card that would work? Anything else I might have fun with?

 

[Phipli]

Would I need to hunt down drivers for these? At least the first one looks like it has an NEC chip for USB

No third party drivers needed (but you might need to install the Apple ones).

USB can be an issue, but an NEC chip is exactly what you want

As for Ethernet; I have read the RTL8169SC is a gigabit chipset that works with OS 9. They're cheap, so if they work well, figure I might as well go gigabit. I think I gathered I'd need to hunt down the driver though, is that true?

They work, but sometimes you have to hack the driver and they only work at 100baseT in OS9 (gig in OSX). I can help with that if needed. The driver is on the Mac garden. I'll dig it out if you can't find it.

Would a 100M chip like the RTL8139 work with OS 9 included driver?

I can't remember which chipsets work off the top of my head sorry.

 

[cobalt60]

Cool, I ordered the 1st combo card I posted. Might buy the 2nd too, tho that one doesn't appear to have an NEC chip.

I'll probably get the gigabit card as well. Thanks for the tip, I did find the driver, and it seems like the chipset is well documented for OS 9 use.

Will probably look at TV tuner and/or A/V input cards next. If my memory is correct, I believe they were a fairly common use of a PCI slot on these Macs.

 

[Skate323k137]

For usb using a PCI Sonnet combo Firewire/USB in a 7500 running OS 9.1, I just had to steal some USB drivers from the 9.2 install CD. There's a blog on it somewhere but I always lose the link.

 

[Phipli]

For usb using a PCI Sonnet combo Firewire/USB in a 7500 running OS 9.1, I just had to steal some USB drivers from the 9.2 install CD. There's a blog on it somewhere but I always lose the link.

There is a stand alone installer for the late era USB drivers I think. Generally it is worth getting the 9.2.1 era ones.

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macos-usb-and-firewire-support

I think 1.4.6 is what you're best to use.

 

[klgroves]

Cool, I ordered the 1st combo card I posted. Might buy the 2nd too, tho that one doesn't appear to have an NEC chip.

I'll probably get the gigabit card as well. Thanks for the tip, I did find the driver, and it seems like the chipset is well documented for OS 9 use.

Will probably look at TV tuner and/or A/V input cards next. If my memory is correct, I believe they were a fairly common use of a PCI slot on these Macs.

Cobalt60,

DId that combo card work out for you? Anyone know if there might be any issues with it in a G3 Minitower?
I have both USB and Firewire cards in it right now, but the USB ports are somewhat corroded and generally don't look in great shape. Inside the card looks fine, but both OS 9.2.2 and Jaguar hang when anything is plugged in. I think a fresh start is in order.

Thanks

 

[cobalt60]

DId that combo card work out for you?

Actually I've got just a plain USB card (NEC chipset, 2 ports) in there now that I can't even get working. Currently have OS 9.1 installed. I believe I have tried pulling drivers from the 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 CDs, as well as macos-usb-and-firewire-support v1.4.6 with no luck. I was thinking next I should try upgrading to OS 9.2.2. Currently missing the 9.2.1 Update.smi that OS 9 Helper requires; any advice on where I can find that?

 

[Phipli]

Actually I've got just a plain USB card (NEC chipset, 2 ports) in there now that I can't even get working. Currently have OS 9.1 installed. I believe I have tried pulling drivers from the 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 CDs, as well as macos-usb-and-firewire-support v1.4.6 with no luck. I was thinking next I should try upgrading to OS 9.2.2. Currently missing the 9.2.1 Update.smi that OS 9 Helper requires; any advice on where I can find that?

It's not the generic USB drivers you need, you specifically need the option for PCI cards from the installer.

But perhaps your card is playing up. Or...

Last question, it doesn't actually show up right in System Profiler, so... Try installing it, restarting... Then plug a mouse in. Specifically a mouse.

 

[cobalt60]

it doesn't actually show up right in System Profiler, so... Try installing it, restarting... Then plug a mouse in. Specifically a mouse.

It does show up in System Profiler as a USB card; does that mean I still have to look for the PCI card driver? When I plug a mouse in, it does not power up or function. A mouse is the main thing I've been wanting to use USB for. I did most of my testing on 8.6 without success, haven't tried much with 9.1.

 

[Phipli]

It does show up in System Profiler as a USB card; does that mean I still have to look for the PCI card driver? When I plug a mouse in, it does not power up or function. A mouse is the main thing I've been wanting to use USB for. I did most of my testing on 8.6 without success, haven't tried much with 9.1.

Sorry, I mean the USB busses don't show up in System Profiler, rather than the PCI card entry.

 

[croissantking]

Might buy the 2nd too, tho that one doesn't appear to have an NEC chip.

Adaptec should be Mac friendly - I don’t recall any issues with the Agere/Lucent chipset. It’s the VIA chipsets you want to avoid as they don’t work properly with Macs.

 

[klgroves]

Just to follow up on this, I bought the first card linked above with USB and firewire which was a good price:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/133238042323
And it worked out of the box in my G3 minitower that had previously had a working Lucent based card in it. The previously installed drivers worked fine without any effort on my part. I had trouble getting it seated in the second PCI slot as it seemed to be catching on something, but I moved it over to the third and all was well. Worked with a mouse, keyboard and usb drive. Now I only need to figure out how to get any mouse buttons but the scroll wheel button to work...

 

[cobalt60]

it worked out of the box

Thanks for that bit of info. I just tried mine, and it too works straight away. Well, left, middle, and right click all register as left click, and scroll doesn't work, but I am guessing that will be fixable with the right software. Really wonder why the standalone USB card isn't working.

 

[cobalt60]

USB OverDrive got the mouse working great. Defaulted to right-click being the same as ctrl-click, and the scroll wheel scrolls. The mouse was super slow, but USB OD has settings for speed, so all in all everything is working great.

I did get the feeling that I was having new higher CPU usage, and it is my understanding that USB in general requires CPU overhead; if that is the case, it is significant on these slower Macs?

 

[Phipli]

I did get the feeling that I was having new higher CPU usage, and it is my understanding that USB in general requires CPU overhead; if that is the case, it is significant on these slower Macs?

There are two versions of USB chipsets, one that uses more CPU than the other - macs use the less processor intensive one. I don't think you'd notice the CPU overheads of USB from a mouse. It's more when you're doing large disk copies etc that the overheads show up.

 

[theirongiant]

@cobalt60: I just ordered the USB/FW combo card from the eBay auction you listed. They still have plenty available. At $7 apiece, it was certainly worth the risk if it did't work.

I installed this PCI card in a PowerMac G3 beige running MacOS 9.0.4. The card did not work until I installed two driver packages:

1. FireWire 2.7 (from OS 9.1)
2. USB Card Support 1.4.6 (includes the Mass Storage extension).

Both of these can be found on the Macintosh Garden or Macintosh Repository.

My test disks were a portable G-Drive with FW 800 (it worked with a FW800/400 adapter), and a generic 4 GB USB thumb drive. USB 1.1 limits the transfer rate to about 1MB/sec, but it worked fine and I was able to initialize the disk in Finder. I've also acquired a used 3rd gen iPod classic 20GB to use as an external disk. This is the iPod that introduced the 30-pin dock connector.