USB 2.0 PCI Card for G4-400 AGP

[John Albert]

John Erdman <jperdman at earthlink.net> wrote:
<< I decided that I finally need to upgrade my G4-400 AGP running OS  10.2.8
to add additional USB 2.0 ports. I wanted to put in a PCI card  that has 4 or
5 ports to cover expansion needs as my older peripherals  gradually bite the
dust and are replaced by USB products.
  When I started my product research, I found a gazillion of these  products
but none that I'm sure are fully Mac compatible. None of the  Belkins that I
looked at say they're Mac compatible.  I've found horror  stories in reviews
where the card was totally incompatible with OS-X,  others where suitable Mac
drivers didn't exist, and poor descriptions  regarding which USB standard the
card supports.
  Any suggestions for a card that works and has OS-X drivers  available? >>

I recently installed a generic USB2 PCI card into my g4/1.25 dual-processor.
It cost me $2.99 from ebay, with shipping, less than $10.

The box shows it as a "BESTports Connection" brand card (as "generic" as it
gets), 3 external and 1 internal port, with an NEC chipset. The chipset is
important because OS 10.3.3 now supports the NEC USB2 chipset natively (no
additional drivers needed).

Once I installed the card, it shows up in the Apple System Profiler as "USB
High-Speed Bus, up to 480mb/sec". I've picked up a 2.5" USB2 drive enclosure
from Other World Computing for $10, but don't yet have a drive installed into
it, so I haven't had a chance to actually try a true "high-speed" device with
it to see how it works.

The NEC chipset _also_ supports deep sleep with 10.3.3 - that is, _most_ of
the time, and not all of the time. It will _usually_ wake up from sleep, if it
_goes_ to sleep. I found that the computer will not go to "deep sleep" (i.e.,
drives and power supply fan spun down) with a USB "storage device" connected
(for example, a USB Smartmedia card reader).

The sleep issue is "hit or miss". I found that if I _proactively_ put the g4
into deep sleep, with no USB storage devices connected, it will wake up
properly. Let it go to sleep on its own, and again, most of the time it wakes
up, but a couple of times it wouldn't awaken and the only recourse was to
recycle the power.

For more on the sleep issue, see this thread at XLR8yourmac.com:
<http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/firewire/fw_usb_card_deep_sleep.html&e=7152>

For anyone wishing to upgrade their g4 to USB2, I don't see any point in
spending extra $$ for "brand-name" PCI cards, as they seem to do no better nor
worse re the "sleep issue". I'd suggest scouring ebay (or any other source)
for the cheapest USB2 PCI card you can find that has the NEC chipset. Install
it into a g4 running 10.3.3, and you should be good to go...

- John