Power Mac G4 MDD and the USB 2.0 chip

[Dandu]

I have a question: the Power Mac G4 MDDs include a USB 2.0 chip (NEC D720101F1), even though Apple marketed the machines as USB 1.1 only — possibly to highlight FireWire instead.

I have a motherboard (without anything else) that allowed me to confirm that it really is a USB 2.0 chip. But I was wondering: has anyone ever managed to actually use USB 2.0 on these machines? I found some old threads showing that third-party drivers more or less enabled USB 2.0 back in 2003, but I couldn’t find anything after that.

Did Apple ever enable USB 2.0 in Tiger or Leopard? Is it a hardware limitation? Does anyone know?

 

[Durosity]

My memory may be wrong, but as I recall when they officially announced USB 2 support with the later MDDs (the FW800?) that enabled USB2 support on the original MDDs that had the correct chipset. What OS is your MDD running?

 

[Dandu]

I have only the Logic Board, now (so i can't test)

 

[croissantking]

This is quite interesting. Sort of implied Apple held off on USB 2.0 support to avoid stealing Firewire’s thunder. Seems silly in hindsight.

@Durosity I thought the PowerMac G5 was the first model to support USB 2.0 officially.