Please ID This!

[A31Chris]

The hardware seems to have trouble reading pci gfx cards that are 98 or newer

hardware issue, the PCI slots are not up to the latest spec used from '98 onwards.

among some other things

please specify.

It seems to have trouble reading newer devices in general. Newer CD roms, I now have a USB compatible developing tool for the Legacy console system but the system has a hard time reading from the USB device correctly and accurately even with 98se installed. Thumb drives are no problem.

[evasive]

same problem, ports are USB 1.1 standard at best and data transfer in those is _slow_ it might throw off the software because it is simply timing out waiting for the data to come in.

Have you got an USB 2.0 add-in card you can borrow or something?

[A31Chris]

same problem, ports are USB 1.1 standard at best and data transfer in those is _slow_ it might throw off the software because it is simply timing out waiting for the data to come in.

Have you got an USB 2.0 add-in card you can borrow or something?

actually I do have a usb 2.0 card. I should put that in. I had a pentium II box that had usb 1.1 and it had no trouble reading this device the way this system is. But I will try the USB card in the PCI slot. See what happens.

On a sidenote, if anyone comes across the updated BIOS for this motherboard I would still very much like to get my hands on it.

[Karlsweldt]

I keep an older Creative Blaster Slot 1 system active, with the i440 chipset. I did update the BIOS from 1999 to 2001. That was the latest BIOS I found. Your system may have a newer BIOS type, but it must match exactly to the present BIOS string. Try wimsbios, esupport or other sites. Even Intel may have a newer BIOS edition. But as to recognizing or working with USB 2.0 devices on a USB 1.0 port, not practical. The design is backwards-compatible, not forward-compatible. An add-on PCI USB 2.0 card would be the only path of happiness.

[A31Chris]

I keep an older Creative Blaster Slot 1 system active, with the i440 chipset. I did update the BIOS from 1999 to 2001. That was the latest BIOS I found. Your system may have a newer BIOS type, but it must match exactly to the present BIOS string. Try wimsbios, esupport or other sites. Even Intel may have a newer BIOS edition. But as to recognizing or working with USB 2.0 devices on a USB 1.0 port, not practical. The design is backwards-compatible, not forward-compatible. An add-on PCI USB 2.0 card would be the only path of happiness.

The device attaches to a mini usb cable but is not usb 2.0 specific. It runs on 1.1 on my other system but has trouble with this one.

[Karlsweldt]

The device attaches to a mini usb cable but is not usb 2.0 specific. It runs on 1.1 on my other system but has trouble with this one

.
Do any other USB devices work properly on this system and the same port?
If the device operates properly on other systems but not on this one, there may be other problems.. such as chipset driver. Or the self-ID feature of most external devices is not recognized or posted. The USB ports each have a max of about 500 mA or 1/2 amp at 5 volts. It may be good to try the device through a powered USB hub.. one that does not draw power from the system. Or the port data wires could be reversed.
But also check the PSU power connections to ensure the PSU is putting out the correct voltage, within +/- 2%. If not familiar with the pinout of the ATX power plug, here is a reference diagram: The diagram is for a 24-pin ATX power plug, but the 20-pin type is identical with the scheme except for the bottom four notations (11, 12, 23, 24).


Note the +5VSB connection with the violet wire. That is the supply for the USB connections when the system is off. It is supplemented with the main +5 volt bus when the PSU is active. The USB pinout diagrams note which leads are power.. USB pinouts:.
Not easy to test if a true +5 volts is available at the USB socket, but there are testers available that rate the USB socket and cable for proper operation.. but are only available in the USB 2.0 configuration. You could try a small 6 volt lamp with maximum 300 mA current on test leads.. but be careful not to short that +5 volt lead to ground!

[A31Chris]

The device attaches to a mini usb cable but is not usb 2.0 specific. It runs on 1.1 on my other system but has trouble with this one

.
Do any other USB devices work properly on this system and the same port?

yes. USB flash drive works fine.

[A31Chris]

I plugged in a PCI USB card into this old beast and the card works great. The Windows 98se disk had the needed drivers. I havent timed how fast it is but am assuming its a USB 2.0 card. My preliminary searchings on the net suggested I'd never be able to use a PCI USB card on a system so old(pre-98 ) but it works great. No cut outs or data loss like I was having with the onboard USB. So far anyways.

Ill have to transfer a real big file like a video or something to get a better idea what speed I'm getting.

On a sidenote am still curious as to finding latest bios update.

For obtaining the BIOS string, go into the first BIOS page and set "Halt on errors" as "all". Don't forget to 'save' before exiting the setup.

Nowhere in any of my bios screens does it have the 'halt on errors' option.

[Hardware Junkie]

Interesting how this post was started in 2002, rebooted in 2009 and still going...

Chances are the PCI ports are not the latest spec so you might not get full USB 2.0 speeds but at least its working...

BIOS update might be difficult. And I probably wouldn't recommend it unless there is some particular reason.
If you want larger hard drive support, I'd recommend picking up a Promise Ultra66/100/133 card. They can support today's newer hard drives.
Unfortunately FAT32 has a 4GB partition limit, so it might be kind of insane to buy a 500GB drive and split it into 125 partitions (even if you had enough drive letters)...

There are NTFS drivers for read access available for Windows 98 but its kinda useless without write access.

[AmEv]

Wait.


I thought the 4gb limit on FAT32 was the LOW limit, ~120GB being the top.