USB not working with G3 mac with OS 9.

[Hitcher]

I just got a 266mhz G3 “outrigger” mac to replace my now defunct 6500 as my OS 9 machine. Everything works fine except for USB, which is provided by an internal card. Ultimately, I want to hook up the mac to my KVM via USB, but to test USB I've been been plugging a mouse and keyboard directly into the USB controller card. So far, neither the mouse nor keyboard work in USB. Using the ADB controllers, if I check Apple System Profiler, it actually lists the USB keyboard and mouse, so the mac appears to see the USB devices but they don't work.

I tried installing USB Card Support 1.4.1 (Apple's archived downloads for old software no longer appears to be available, so I got it from cnet.) and later reinstalled and updated back to OS 9.2.2 again. I tried two different USB adapter cards (Opti-based Belkin and Syba) but didn't have any luck.

I checked with the Belkin and Syba websites to see if they have have any drivers or any additional software but I couldn't find anything. I'm much more familiar with PCs so I could be wrong, but my understanding is that I need the Apple USB Card Support rather than drivers from the manufacture.

Does anyone have any ideas with what could be causing my problem?

 

[Byrd]

Is the USB card detected under System Profiler?  If not detected either the USB Card Support drivers aren't all loaded or the PCI card is simply incompatible (anything that says USB 1.1 OHCI compliant should work).  I'd also consider reinstalling OS 9.2.2 with the USB support drivers as supplied for that particular OS.

 

[techknight]

you probably need an HID driver. just like I had to install a mass storage driver on top of USB card support in order to use USB sticks

 

[Hitcher]

Thanks for the responses, guys. I figured out my problem. The used mac originally came with OS 9.0.4 and when it didn't work with any USB card I installed, I assumed the best option was to update it to the last version of OS 9 and work on the problem in that environment.

According to some information I stumbled on, 9.2.2 can have USB-related problems with some Macs without built-in USB ports. I was totally unaware of this, so trying to fix the problem by upgrading from 9.0.4 up to 9.2.2 was apparently my first mistake.

I reinstalled the OS a few times, but I always upgraded to 9.2.2 before troubleshooting the USB issue, thinking this would give me the best chance to fix the problem. Ultimately, I just needed a fresh install of OS 9.04, with the USB extensions, and no further updates, except for USB Card Support 1.4.1.