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Latino

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 4, 2003
41
0
London, UK
Hi all

I just found this:

http://www.macnn.com/news/19183

Reading the user feedback at the bottom, it seems like some people have it working.

Sorry if this has been posted elsewhere. I couldn't see it doing a search for USB2

So, any of you with a powermac DP 1.2Ghz or 1.43Ghz care to give it a go?

Latino
 

iJon

macrumors 604
Feb 7, 2002
6,586
229
what i dont understand though is how they test the drivers. if they tested a printer or something wouldnt the manufacturor have to make a usb 2.0 driver to go with the printer. or are they testing it some other way.

iJon
 

Freg3000

macrumors 68000
Sep 22, 2002
1,914
0
New York
I'd try it. Not that I have any USB 2 devices. Or a new MDD Powermac. Or any avaiable USB ports.

Ok i wouldn't try it. :rolleyes:

Have there been any horror stories from this yet?
 

Sun Baked

macrumors G5
May 19, 2002
14,937
157
So I don't have to answer this too many times, I'll answer the generic questions.

Which Mac actually has the new PCI to USB2 bridge?

The only mac is the Revision B MDD PowerMac, the one with FW800.

At least that's what the tech documents say, but there are some that are not updated yet.
 

Sun Baked

macrumors G5
May 19, 2002
14,937
157
Originally posted by blueflame
so does the 17 in powebook have it? it has fw800
A
The only mac is the Revision B MDD PowerMac, the one with FW800.

At least that's what the tech documents say, but there are some that are not updated yet.

---

The where and why is in the other USB 2 threads.

EDIT: Adding the following...

This is the Revision B MDD PowerMac (jan 03), it has some motherboard changes that were included with the addition of FW800 -- ie a PCI USB controller chip.

jos01.gif


This differs from the Revision A MDD PowerMac (sept 02), which has NO USB 2 chip.

moj01.gif


According to the document found here -- it's probably the only machine with this chip.

---

Note: If you have the Revision B PowerMac with FW800 & Airport Extreme capability, you may have a USB2 controller chip -- if you have any other machine besides the new iPod (most likely not).
 

BaghdadBob

macrumors 6502a
Apr 13, 2003
810
0
Gorgeous, WA
Other than being able to use USB 2.0 devices, why would you do this if you have firewire? Apple's official quote is "And it's way faster than USB 2.0."

:eek:Are they lying?!?!?!?

If not, what would one need it for, I'm curious. I thought there weren't alot of USB 2.0 devices out there anyway

(<--- is more ignorant on this subject than even other subjects)
 

iJon

macrumors 604
Feb 7, 2002
6,586
229
Originally posted by BaghdadBob
Other than being able to use USB 2.0 devices, why would you do this if you have firewire? Apple's official quote is "And it's way faster than USB 2.0."

:eek:Are they lying?!?!?!?

If not, what would one need it for, I'm curious. I thought there weren't alot of USB 2.0 devices out there anyway

(<--- is more ignorant on this subject than even other subjects)
apple is being stupid on this one, most people dont even know apple invented firewire, nobody cares. its not like pcs and macs or anthing. usb 2.0 is soon becoming what usb is. a standard for many cameras, printers, scanners and things like that. usb 2.0 is faster than usb, who cares about firewire. firewire still serves its purpose, the same as fw800 will. there are just certain things apple needs to put on their computers, like svideo on the powermacs.

iJon
 

TyleRomeo

macrumors 6502a
Mar 22, 2002
888
0
New York
Originally posted by BaghdadBob
Other than being able to use USB 2.0 devices, why would you do this if you have firewire? Apple's official quote is "And it's way faster than USB 2.0."

:eek:Are they lying?!?!?!?

If not, what would one need it for, I'm curious. I thought there weren't alot of USB 2.0 devices out there anyway

(<--- is more ignorant on this subject than even other subjects)

there are actually a number of growing USB 2 devices that take advantage of USB 2's speed but not quite firewires, such as a new batch of digital cameras, printers, scanners, media readers ect... the point is that is availble and I wouldnt mind to have USB 2 ports, i have the old 1.25 MDD, so how do i go about activating the USB 2 drives?

Tyler
 

iJon

macrumors 604
Feb 7, 2002
6,586
229
Originally posted by TyleRomeo
there are actually a number of growing USB 2 devices that take advantage of USB 2's speed but not quite firewires, such as a new batch of digital cameras, printers, scanners, media readers ect... the point is that is availble and I wouldnt mind to have USB 2 ports, i have the old 1.25 MDD, so how do i go about activating the USB 2 drives?

Tyler
you will need a pci card since your powermac doesnt have usb 2.0

iJon
 

BaghdadBob

macrumors 6502a
Apr 13, 2003
810
0
Gorgeous, WA
Originally posted by iJon
apple is being stupid on this one, most people dont even know apple invented firewire, nobody cares. its not like pcs and macs or anthing. usb 2.0 is soon becoming what usb is. a standard for many cameras, printers, scanners and things like that. usb 2.0 is faster than usb, who cares about firewire. firewire still serves its purpose, the same as fw800 will. there are just certain things apple needs to put on their computers, like svideo on the powermacs.

iJon

Well I know Apple invented firewire. They also seem to be leading the edge on wireless networking. Before I had heard of AirPort, I hadn't even heard of wireless (wasn't plugged in for a while to that point...was stuck with a quadra..........) and now they have AirPort Extreme.

The question is, why isn't FW a more popular standard? Does it not have the hot-plugging capabilities that USB does? Is it just another case of Apple failing to market some of their more practical and outstanding technologies? ("I am a software developer, and iPhoto is great! What is FireWire, prabhu?")

Someone fill me in if you have patience. I could read up on it, but I love you guys so much, I would hate to miss the opportunity to pick your brains :) :) :)

And WHY is Apple letting INTEL beat them to the punch for actually ADVERTISING wireless networking??? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY!!!

Gack. I'm gonna cough up a hariball...
 

Sherman

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2002
121
0
Berzerkeley
Here is the thing. Those chips are CAPABLE of doing USB 2.0, but only the 1.1 part of the chipset is activated. Apple ordered them on the cheap. You cannot get them to use USB 2.0 just by installing some drivers. That's on the same line of though that you could make the older AO4 Pioneer SuperDrives go faster with that driver update.

Once those things have been made to only use 1.1, they won't use 2.0. Apple will have to order them 2.0 style before it will work. As of now, they'll just fsck your system.

Sorry to disspoint :(
 

maxterpiece

macrumors 6502a
Mar 5, 2003
729
0
why have USB ports when you can have backwards compatible USB2 ports... there are no plusses, just minuses to having USB instead of USB2. So HA! Recoup that!
 

MacBandit

macrumors 604
Originally posted by Sherman
As of now, they'll just fsck your system.

Sorry to disspoint :(

Just so you know fsck is not a swear word. It's the UNIX command for (File System Check). You should get to know the command if you use OSX. In case you don't know about it or how to use it just let me know and I will explain in detail.

Oh, and I too have heard of completely locked up systems from people trying random USB2 drivers.
 

iJed

macrumors 6502
Sep 4, 2001
264
10
West Sussex, UK
Originally posted by Sherman
Here is the thing. Those chips are CAPABLE of doing USB 2.0, but only the 1.1 part of the chipset is activated. Apple ordered them on the cheap. You cannot get them to use USB 2.0 just by installing some drivers. That's on the same line of though that you could make the older AO4 Pioneer SuperDrives go faster with that driver update.

Once those things have been made to only use 1.1, they won't use 2.0. Apple will have to order them 2.0 style before it will work. As of now, they'll just fsck your system.

Sorry to disspoint :(

According to MacNN it appears that people have got this working: "According to a Korean site Create Mac, it appears that the drivers for the USB 2.0 chipset in the MDD 1.25 and 1.42 Ghz are updated and confirmed that they do work."
 

BaghdadBob

macrumors 6502a
Apr 13, 2003
810
0
Gorgeous, WA
USB 2.0 vs. FW Speeds

OK, someone in a previous thread was pointing out the difference between megabytes and megabits (at least the abbreviations). Correct me if I'm wrong, but a bit is 1/8 of a byte, as a byte is 8 bits, right? So if you have a transfer speed of 800 megaBITS per second, then that equates to about 100 megaBYTES per second?

Someone on MacNN said something about now having 480MB/s...which is megabytes per second, which would be faster than 800 megabits per second...and yet FW is supposed to be "way" (--Apple) faster then USB 2.0.

Am I confused about the whole bits vs. bytes thing, or is that person confused about the speed of USB 2.0 (getting their bits and bytes mixed up).

Sorry, but I suck with network ****, I can't even get my Jaguar system hooked up to my fiancee's XP system, and they're hooked up through a hub for DSL. I have to email her photos and graphics (LAME).
 

MacBandit

macrumors 604
Re: USB 2.0 vs. FW Speeds

Originally posted by BaghdadBob
OK, someone in a previous thread was pointing out the difference between megabytes and megabits (at least the abbreviations). Correct me if I'm wrong, but a bit is 1/8 of a byte, as a byte is 8 bits, right? So if you have a transfer speed of 800 megaBITS per second, then that equates to about 100 megaBYTES per second?

Someone on MacNN said something about now having 480MB/s...which is megabytes per second, which would be faster than 800 megabits per second...and yet FW is supposed to be "way" (--Apple) faster then USB 2.0.

Am I confused about the whole bits vs. bytes thing, or is that person confused about the speed of USB 2.0 (getting their bits and bytes mixed up).

Sorry, but I suck with network ****, I can't even get my Jaguar system hooked up to my fiancee's XP system, and they're hooked up through a hub for DSL. I have to email her photos and graphics (LAME).

You've got it just fine. It's just that most people when they write out abbreviations have no clue that capitalization makes such a difference. Examples MHz - Mhz, MB - Mb, KB -Kb. As you can see it goes on and on. Big B means Bytes little b means bits.

USB2 is rated at 480Mb/s and Firewire is 400Mb/s, Firewire 2 is 800Mb/s. You can see the speed comparisons there. The problem is USB2 has a quite a bit of working overhead so the actual throughput is much much less then the theoretical maximum and in real world tests USB2 quite often shows lower throughput then even the original Firewire at 400Mb/s.
 

BaghdadBob

macrumors 6502a
Apr 13, 2003
810
0
Gorgeous, WA
Oh, good. Man, how many times has someone else's confusion made me second-guess myself? It's hard always being right :p

My girl is sick of my showing her all the neat things my computer can do that hers doesn't. She once told my icily "Are you just going to keep telling me how great Macs are or are you going to buy me one?"

She would switch, too. The only advantage she's ever seen between PCs and Macs is that the PCs at Jostens printed about ten times faster. Forget the fact that the administrators had turned off background printing on all the Macs and the PCs had about 10% print failure rate (to film, anyway). But I digress.

Apple does need to start including USB 2.0, there's no reason not to, barring a significant price increase. Maybe Panther will turn this on for the equipped Macs? That would be funny at the expo: "And with Panther, USB 2.0 magically works on select G4s!"
 

mangoman

macrumors 6502a
Nov 27, 2002
929
60
Second Floor
For what it's worth, I stuck an Orange PCI USB2/Firewire card in my 933 tower. Installed Orange's drivers. Everything works fine, but (and everybody's got a big but) ... Deep sleep doesn't work. Asked Orange about it and they confirmed that it's a problem, blamed Apple.

The usual suspects.

:D
 

heal

macrumors newbie
Apr 21, 2003
2
0
USB 2 - things not mentioned

Hi all

No-one seems to have mentioned a few things in the usb 2 vs firewire debate. But just for the record

- Firewire is WAY faster than USB2, dont get bogged down in the numbers - notice how video professionals havent embraced USB2?. Here they say

- Despite USB 2.0's 80 Kbps speed advantage over FireWire, our testing showed that the additional overhead of USB 2.0 made it slower than FireWire. For high-bandwidth devices such as external hard drives, the difference was as high as 70 percent.?

and that is comparing firewire 400!

- I think USB 2 support is fine but not particularly useful unless it is a usb2 device only - the only problem is some manufacturers will only add a usb2 plug to their camera (etc) and forgo FW which is faster - a worrying trend

- Firewire started as an Apple only product whch others had to pay for. USB2 was launched as a competitor so that intel didnt have to pay the royalty. USB2 is a ?stretch? of USB?1?. I doubt that there will be a USB?3? as there aint much juice left in the think (correct me if im wrong) However, Firewire 800 is only a step with firewire 1600 next in line - now, 200 megabytes per second Will blow your hair back.

- As far as I am aware, USB2 is only as fast as the slowest device plugged into it. Plug a usb?1? device such as a mouse inot the chain and the performance plumments to 12Mb ( 1 and a bit MBytes/s)

have fun



m
 

Sol

macrumors 68000
Jan 14, 2003
1,564
6
Australia
Re: USB 2 - things not mentioned

Originally posted by heal
- As far as I am aware, USB2 is only as fast as the slowest device plugged into it. Plug a usb?1? device such as a mouse inot the chain and the performance plumments to 12Mb ( 1 and a bit MBytes/s)

Good point. I think this feature of USB 2.0 is the most likely reason why Apple does not support it. Since USB 2.0 ports look exactly the same as USB 1.1 it is highly likely that most people would connect their external hard-drives, cameras, etc into the same bus as something like the mouse and keyboard which are USB 1.1 devices. This would slow down all devices to 12 Mbs and create nothing but confusion. On the other hand, having all the fast devices plugged into FireWire and all the slow devices into USB 1.1 keeps things simple and efficient.
 
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