USB PCI cards

To be honest, I don't think I've ever tried the top slot, so it could always have been like this. It's apparently "fixed" - I was told it was by the previous owner, and I've never had any motherboard USB or IDE issues (though for my own peace of mind I use the IDE card for the hard drives). And it's running at 800MHz.

Is there much involved with fitting the AC97 chip? My board doesn't have it, but if it's as simple as fitting the chip then that's a possible alternative to the Soundblaster...

@Daedalus

Quote:

ok

Quote:

ok. So far (again not that many posts), fixed/unfixed and clock has not been the determining factor. Just the slot #.

Quote:

hmm...a few things about this.
link from when this was 1st discussed
and
New VIA686B 5.3 AHI driver and Mixer 1.16 on OS4depot
and
Miracles happen: A1 onboard audio works!

It's obvious there is talk about both "quality" and the value of gaining a slot.

Terratec Aureon 5.1 Fun and Sound Card summary

I know that Kicko and ssolie have/had the ESI Juli and are/were pleased.

I think different people would give you different advice on whether to use AC97 or a card. My concern, based on what we are discussing, is what effects using onboard might have on the rest of your system. If you see the PCI posts so far, they are all from people using a card for sound I think.
I'd like to hear some PCI reports regarding USB2 from folks who also added back the sigmatel chip and also those who activated it with DaveAE's driver.
Sorry if this all sounds complicated...but it is.

#6

No, thanks for the detailed reply! Quality wouldn't be the biggest factor for me once it was "acceptable" (totally subjective of course), and I'd also like to hear from people who have both working before I risk fitting the chip. I do like the sound from my Soundblaster Live 5.1 - but USB2 would be nice as well... *sigh*

Just had a rummage in my parts bin and found a board with the 3.3V version of that chip. So close, but I guess I won't be trying it tonight :)

@number6

I forget which thread I replied to before. I have an NEC USB2 card working quite well in slot 2.

Additional info since writing that: This is on a "fixed board" (Kgrach, USB and DMA) with the original factory installed AC97 running as the sound source.

Paul

@Daedalus

I mounted the AC97 chip myself. It has 48 microscopic pins on a chips smaller than your pinky-finger-nail so you would need either a hot air soldering station and soldering paste, or a very fine soldering iron and preferably a microscope to do it.

I did it at my former work where we had just gotten such equipment.

I actually stopped using it because I wasn't pleased with the sound quality. I found it subtly indistinct. However, I have a HiFi system and I'm quite picky. If you have crappy speakers and play crappy MP3's you won't hear a difference. I still have it of course and the driver installed.

@Deniil

Hmmm... That doesn't sound too great. I know I said quality isn't all that important, but I still have it playing through a hi-fi. Other computers with motherboard sound have been fine for me, would you consider it much worse than that?

Yeah, I saw the site of the chip, it's not that bad, and I've done similar soldering with a fine tip before. Hmmm...

@Daedalus

Well, if you have experience with such soldering then it shouldn't be a problem.

I wouldn't say it's worse that other mobo sound, but I haven't been able to compare. I mean, its not like it's going to be all noisy or so. I just felt it lacked a bit in the deeper base. As if it lacked some capacitors to keept it steady. I mean it wasn't much, but I thought I experienced both the SB Audigy and the CMI8738 I have now to be slightly more distinct in its sound. Those "real" sound cards have A LOT more capacitors on them then the on-board one.

IIRC there were some open slots for SMD caps or resistors and it might be missing some capacitors. I'm not sure.

Cool, thanks for the info anyway. If I come across a chip at some stage I might give it a try - I don't think it's all that risky a job (*touches wood*), so if it turns out to be unsatisfactory, then at least I know...

I jumped on the USB2 train by purchasing a second hand NEC 4+1 PCI USB card and inserted it either in slot 1-2-3, disabling/enabling front/rear onboard USB of my fixed A1XEG4 and it does not work properly !

The only thing I get is the notification errors !

ranger is giving the following information :
ID Bus: 0x00 Device: 0x09 Function: 0x00
Class USB UHCI
Device 0x0035 rev 0x43 (n/a)
Vendor 0x1033 (n/a)

so so far USB2 is a nogo for me

@Lio

Please post your issue:

New EHCI driver fails on my system

You should run PCI scan as well.

#6

right, will do it in a few minutes...

here is what pciscan tells me :

m## Vendor Device Vendor name Descriptionm
01 0x10CC 0x0660 Mai Logic Incorporated Articia S Host Bridge
02 0x10CC 0x0661 Mai Logic Incorporated Articia S PCI Bridge
03 0x10B7 0x9200 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado]
04 0x1106 0x0686 VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South]
05 0x1106 0x0571 VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE
06 0x1106 0x3038 VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
07 0x1106 0x3038 VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
08 0x1106 0x3057 VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI]
09 0x1106 0x3058 VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller
10 0x1106 0x3068 VIA Technologies, Inc. AC'97 Modem Controller
11 0x1095 0x0680 Silicon Image, Inc. PCI0680 Ultra ATA-133 Host Controller
12 0x1095 0x3512 Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3512 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller
13 0x1033 0x0035 NEC Corporation USB
14 0x1033 0x0035 NEC Corporation USB
15 0x1033 0x00E0 NEC Corporation USB 2.0
16 0x1002 0x4966 ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 If [Radeon 9000]
17 0x1002 0x496E ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Radeon 9000] (Secondary)

ok I exchanged my NEC PCI 4+1 for a ALi PCI 4+1 with the following ID :

## Vendor Device Vendor name Description
13 0x10B9 0x5237 ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller
14 0x10B9 0x5237 ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller
15 0x10B9 0x5237 ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller
16 0x10B9 0x5239 ALi Corporation USB 2.0 Controller


and now all is fine, my USB stick is running at 2.0 speed as you can see below :

scsispeed DRIVE usbdisk.device:0 FAST BUF1=8192 BUF2=16384 BUF3=32768 BUF4=65536
MKSoft ScsiSpeed 4.2 Copyright © 1989-92 MKSoft Development
AmigaOS4 port by Stéphane Guillard
------------------------------------------------------------
CPU: 68020 AmigaOS Version: 53.22
Device: usbdisk.device:0


Testing with a 8192 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer.
Read from SCSI: 2571468 bytes/sec

Testing with a 16384 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer.
Read from SCSI: 4341760 bytes/sec

Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer.
Read from SCSI: 6850150 bytes/sec

Testing with a 65536 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer.
Read from SCSI: 9637068 bytes/sec

@whose

I have a VIA VT6212L card here, but no luck so far.

It is a 5 Port USB2.0 Internal PCI Adapter.
It is a VIA VT6212L chipset.

When I insert a device the usb notification comes up, but it take a while for an icon to appear on workbench, and it shoes up as USB0:Uninitialized, I then get a Disk_Warning!
that says
Quote:
USB Inspector shows 5 entries under Functionality/Hub
Quote:
under Functionality/Mass Storage, it shows
Quote:

PCIscan shows Quote:

In Kicklayout I have uhci.usbhcd, ohci.usbhcd, and ehci.usbhcd enabled (upd4 default).

This is on an A!XE-G3 800.

Can anyone give me any ideas?
Should I try disabling the ohci.usbhcd in kicklayout?
Or will that cause more problems?