Running a USB2.0 addon card under Win98SE

[Comos]

HI everyone,

does anybody have experience with running a USB2.0 (NEC chipset) on Win98SE? Currently I have a addon card from Vipower,where is USB2.0 and SATA controller.

I installed it without problems,when the Win starts, tested,workin OKay,but suddenly after reboot the windows gets stuck during booting (not freezed,the CTRL+ALT+DEL still works).

So under safe mode I removed the drivers for USB2.0 card and then the system boots up normaly.There were no conflicts ,nothing.I tried to use the stock drivers on Vipower CD and also the drivers from our unofficial service pack for Win98SE ,but the result was the same.

Any ideas? Maybe to disable the onboard USB 1.0 in BIOS?

Tomas

[CharlesF]

Any ideas? Maybe to disable the onboard USB 1.0 in BIOS?

My poor 2 cents: I have added a D-Link DU-520 USB2.0 card on my Windows 98 SE.

USB 1 is still activated in BIOS and still in use for some devices, and never have got any conflict between them.

[Multibooter]

Currently I have a addon card from Vipower,where is USB2.0 and SATA controller.

Hi Tomas, a year and a half ago I bought an eSATA-PATA-USB combo card VIA VT6421A, which came with drivers for Win98. I never got it to work with my Asus P5PE-VM motherboard under Win98. It's lying in a box somewhere now. How about getting just a USB 2.0 card, no combo card?

My Asus P5PE-VM motherboard has just 3 PCI slots, that's why I tried a combo PCI card initially. Eventually I'll be getting a PCI adapter for laptop PCCards. There are good laptop PCCards for USB 2.0, eSATA etc.

[Comos]

Currently I have a addon card from Vipower,where is USB2.0 and SATA controller.

Hi Tomas, a year and a half ago I bought an eSATA-PATA-USB combo card VIA VT6421A, which came with drivers for Win98. I never got it to work with my Asus P5PE-VM motherboard under Win98. It's lying in a box somewhere now. How about getting just a USB 2.0 card, no combo card?

My Asus P5PE-VM motherboard has just 3 PCI slots, that's why I tried a combo PCI card initially. Eventually I'll be getting a PCI adapter for laptop PCCards. There are good laptop PCCards for USB 2.0, eSATA etc.

That combo card with VIA VT6421A I have also,when I wanted to add another disk,but later I bought a Promise UltraTX133 which is workin perfecty.I can get a standalone USB2.0 card ,what I have seen in the stores there are two types with the NEC and VIA chipset.

I'll try that NEC one and see what will happen....That combo card was a solution for me with faster USB and to add another disks atleast in SATA.

What were your symptoms,that was not able to get it to work?

[Multibooter]

What were your symptoms,that was not able to get it to work?

There were just too many unresolved time-consuming problems:

1) The motherboard has onboard USB 2.0 with a special ICH5 USB driver, so there would be one USB 2.0 driver for the onboard USB 2.0, another USB 2.0 driver for the combo card, i.e. there might have been a possible driver conflict when 2 different versions of the Orangeware driver were installed

2) when I double-clicked in My Computer on a connected USB 2.0 HDD, the computer froze

3) HDDs connected to the ports of the combo card were annoyingly slow

4) I actually had to saw out a metal piece from the desktop chassis so that I could plug in cables into the eSATA and USB connectors on the combo card

I had originally bought the card for eSATA plus the extra IDE connection, I didn't need the USB 2.0 connectors. Unfortunately I have not gotten around to installing another eSATA card on my desktop (the motherboard has onboard SATA, so I might eventually just use an eSATA connector instead of an eSATA card). So with my 10-year-old 700MHz Inspiron 7500 laptops I have eSATA (with the excellent and easy-to-install Vantec UGT-ST350CB PCCard), but on my dual-core desktop I have no eSATA connector .

Edited December 9, 2010 by Multibooter

[M()zart]

2) when I double-clicked in My Computer on a connected USB 2.0 HDD, the computer froze

May be that's not about your case, but I had this when plugging my USB HDD with only one data connector of an y-cable because of low power. Everything unfreezed after pulling out my HDD.

[Prozactive]

Coincidentally I just installed a Syba VIA VT6212 USB 2.0 PCI card and I'm in the process of testing it out. I was able to get the card to work after installing the official drivers from the VIA website but I'm having some strange issues I'm only starting to sort out and troubleshoot. The card was able to detect and access one of my external USB 2.0 HDDs but I encountered several serious errors after running WinME replacement Scandisk on the drive from Win98 SE. Strangely, the drive passes all WinXP Scandisk checks (it's a dual-boot system). I don't know what's going on here but it's very disturbing. And I can't detect the external HDD with my Ghost USB boot disk which has had no problems detecting and accessing every other external USB device to date.

[dencorso]

@Prozactive: Let's update your USB stack to the latest possible files before giving up. You have NUSB3.3 installed? If not, do it, please. Then proceed as per this post.

As for SATA on 98SE, be warned that the last drivers known to really work are: Via's SerialATA_V220E.zip (direct download). Now, the bad news is that I think they don't support e-SATA, or don't do it properly.

But this is how I remember it, so I may be wrong. If you can manage to find Via's description of the features of the 220e driver somewhere still, you may find out for sure.

[herbalist]

USB cards with the NEC chipset do work on both 98FE and SE. I've had one in my old HP for years. Unless your USB hardware came with drivers for 98, you will need NUSB, which is available for both 98FE and 98SE. On my PC, I also had to install the Orangeware drivers after NUSB in order to get 2.0 speeds from the card. They also work on both FE and SE. On FE, the drivers had to be installed manually as the CD claimed that they weren't compatible. So far, every USB device I've plugged into it has worked properly on both 98 systems. The 2 built in USB ports also work but are limited to 1.1 speed.

I've never tried a combo card so I can't comment on whether one will work with 98 or not.

[Prozactive]

@dencorso:

Thanks for the info and advice. I do have NUSB 3.3 installed on my system. And I was just browsing that Ext. HDDs >137GB thread you referenced as well as the USB 2.0 stack thread, now that I actually have USB 2.0 hardware capability. I did some more troubleshooting work on the system yesterday and was finally somehow able to get Ghost to detect my external HDD. I'm still not sure how I managed to do so. More detailed trial and error troubleshooting will be required to figure that out. But all the files on the HDD check out 100% and I'm getting full USB 2.0 speed. The WinME Scandisk errors are what concern me the most, but they probably belong in that Ext. HDDs >137GB thread.

Sorry to semi-hijack this thread.

@herbalist:

Coincidentally I just mentioned you in reference to SSM and KernelEx. I've started using SSM on my systems recently after reading your excellent detailed technical discussions and recommendations on it. But back to this topic, that's good you addressed the OP's specific issue. I almost got the NEC chipset add-on card but the VIA card was cheaper and I've always had good luck with VIA. As I recall, the NEC card was also supposed to work in Win9x/ME. I've seen the OrangeWare drivers frequently mentioned but I'm not familiar with them.

[herbalist]

The Orangeware drivers are distributed with a lot of USB devices and are available on many vendor websites but are not generally referred to by the "orangeware" name. For me, version 2.3 has worked the best. YMMV

The driver package contains the following files:

ousb2hub.sys

ousbehci.sys

ousb2.inf

The only problem I've had with USB was accessing parts of my external hard drive in pure DOS. It turned out that the problem wasn't USB related at all, but was due to the way GParted partitioned the drive. Another member helped me straighten that out. I can't comment on how it works with USB drives > 137GB as mine is an old 80GB. The USB card also worked well when I installed it for a short time in a Compaq P866/815E . The Compaqs built in USB worked very poorly with my external and flash drives, constant errors. By using the USB card, I was able to install and update directly from the external drive. Depending on the USB card and the requirements of the external drive, you might run into problems with a card that doesn't deliver sufficient power. A USB hub with its own power supply will fix that. I added one just so the USB ports would be in easy reach. NUSB identified it easily and whatever I plug into it works fine. The only problem it creates is with the Acronis rescue CD, which won't recognize devices plugged into it.

The Orangeware drivers themselves shouldn't cause problems. Even so, if you make a full system backup first, there's no risk in working with both sets of drivers. At a minimum, make a registry backup first. Another app that helps with the issues caused by modifying and updating is Inctrl5. It's an install monitor that takes system snapshots of the registry and file system before and after the install or test, then shows all the changes in your choice of formats, which can be saved. If a full list of the drive contents is created when the system is built and Inctrl5 is used for every install and update afterwards, it enables you to account for every file on your system and where it came from.

[bristols]

The Orangeware drivers are distributed with a lot of USB devices and are available on many vendor websites but are not generally referred to by the "orangeware" name. For me, version 2.3 has worked the best. YMMV

Incidentally, for anyone interested, the Orangeware 2.3 USB driver can be found here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070321052856/http://www.doubleh.com.tw/dh-page/download.htm

Direct Download:

http://web.archive.org/web/20061201081001/www.doubleh.com.tw/download/Driver+upgrade/AliNEC23-931119/U2v2_3.exe

[Comos]

USB cards with the NEC chipset do work on both 98FE and SE. I've had one in my old HP for years. Unless your USB hardware came with drivers for 98, you will need NUSB, which is available for both 98FE and 98SE. On my PC, I also had to install the Orangeware drivers after NUSB in order to get 2.0 speeds from the card. They also work on both FE and SE. On FE, the drivers had to be installed manually as the CD claimed that they weren't compatible. So far, every USB device I've plugged into it has worked properly on both 98 systems. The 2 built in USB ports also work but are limited to 1.1 speed.

I've never tried a combo card so I can't comment on whether one will work with 98 or not.

That combo card is like normal two cards installed in the system but only 2-1, nothing special.NUSB I have installed latest, maybe this problem is due to some mess in the USB drivers.

[Comos]

The Orangeware drivers are distributed with a lot of USB devices and are available on many vendor websites but are not generally referred to by the "orangeware" name. For me, version 2.3 has worked the best. YMMV

The driver package contains the following files:

ousb2hub.sys

ousbehci.sys

ousb2.inf

The only problem I've had with USB was accessing parts of my external hard drive in pure DOS. It turned out that the problem wasn't USB related at all, but was due to the way GParted partitioned the drive. Another member helped me straighten that out. I can't comment on how it works with USB drives > 137GB as mine is an old 80GB. The USB card also worked well when I installed it for a short time in a Compaq P866/815E . The Compaqs built in USB worked very poorly with my external and flash drives, constant errors. By using the USB card, I was able to install and update directly from the external drive. Depending on the USB card and the requirements of the external drive, you might run into problems with a card that doesn't deliver sufficient power. A USB hub with its own power supply will fix that. I added one just so the USB ports would be in easy reach. NUSB identified it easily and whatever I plug into it works fine. The only problem it creates is with the Acronis rescue CD, which won't recognize devices plugged into it.

The Orangeware drivers themselves shouldn't cause problems. Even so, if you make a full system backup first, there's no risk in working with both sets of drivers. At a minimum, make a registry backup first. Another app that helps with the issues caused by modifying and updating is Inctrl5. It's an install monitor that takes system snapshots of the registry and file system before and after the install or test, then shows all the changes in your choice of formats, which can be saved. If a full list of the drive contents is created when the system is built and Inctrl5 is used for every install and update afterwards, it enables you to account for every file on your system and where it came from.

I can confirm,that the USB drive over 137GB works with my Win98SE ,I have only installed the >137GB patch and NUSB (in that time there were not the lates) and it works with my USB Toshiba 320GB drive.I had to use USB hub with PSU,the power from one port was not enough.I also tried my WD 1Tera and also workin fine through NTFS for Win98 from Paragon.

[Comos]

Seems that I have found that problem.According to USBman's tips I have to disable the IRQ sharing for that PCI slot.So I will try that ...