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.

 

[mac27]

according to EveryMac, the Power Mac G5 is the first Mac to officially support/include USB 2.0.

 

[Durosity]

Yep, my memory is getting bad in my old age.. just had a look at my MDD 1ghz G4 with FireWire 800 and it only does USB1.1 under 10.4.

 

[Dandu]

And the chip on the logic board is USB 2.0

 

[croissantking]

And the chip on the logic board is USB 2.0 View attachment 99273

Is this a FW800 board?

Worth investigating if it's hardware, firmware or software that's preventing it from running at USB 2.0 speeds. If it's hardware then maybe there's an empty resistor footprint that can be populated/removed to enable this. I suggest reading the datasheet.

 

[Dandu]

Yep, it's a FW800 board (630T4357/630-4497)