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Need USB help (modified 0 times) George-I-O My system can’t find USB. Well, first of all I can’t find USB enable in the original BIOS. I have original BIOS and internal IDE controller with Fireball 2Gig, Win98FE clean install, boot – no problem. Floppy report to win95 is enabled in bios. One more thing still unresolved – the PCI bridge in SYSTEM – couldn’t find suitable driver. Other than that – system is very stable and never hangs. What should I do to get USB to work? 05-12-2000 12:39:53

RE:Need USB help (modified 0 times) Brian|S| George- if I remember correctly, the toggle for the USB ports should be under 'chipset <something>' in the bios. It's there though, under one of the menus, in the original bios. You should then enable USB, and win98 will detect it upon bootup. However, on my configuration, when win98 would try and install the driver for USB, my machine would lock up. I upgraded my bios to the original OEM bios found in Misfit's bios pack, available here: http://www.geocities.com/d1v3rs1ty/new_ws_bios_pack.zip instructions on flashing your bios are included. After upgrading my bios, the USB driver installed without a hitch. However, my USB ethernet adapter never fully worked correctly (at least using the Compaq USB Host Adapter driver) Let us know how your USB device works for you... Also, to fix the PCI Bridge conflict/problem/annoying ! symbol :) download this: http://www.avt.com.hk/mediagx/driver/win9xallb40.zip I would eliminate the audio and graphics drivers from the installation list, as I've heard of people having problems installing the complete package. Just install the video/audio drivers seperately... if you didn't know, they can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/wehackem/ good luck, and make sure to update us! -Brian 05-12-2000 20:55:24

RE:Need USB help (modified 0 times) George-I-O Brian, Thanks for straight and complete answer. I did found USB enable in some unusual place in BIOS (I should look better first time). Driver installation was a snap. Beta pack (link above) installed over original drivers (posted by Hardware_1 in tech-ref) fix the bridge thing in system configuration. My USB network adapter was detected after that as well. I configured network on both PCs (PII and WSP) to NetBEUI (IT people at work saying this is the simplest protocol to set up), connect them with X-link cable (no hub in between), set file and drive sharing and everything came up without any hassle. Testing: I read many posts about problem with USB network adapters, so first think I did – copy large ~300Meg mpg. video file to WSP. It seems to be slower than I expect, took about 15 minutes to complete, newer the less – file copied without any errors or hang-ups. During copying I noticed that “Collision” LED was on almost 50% of the time. I also noticed that running any application on either PC 05-16-2000 08:16:25

RE:Need USB help (modified 0 times) George-I-O ...would reduce duty cycle of the collision LED but will not speed-up copying (judging by copy progress bar). When I tried to play some video or audio file across network – collision never occurred and everything was working without a glitch. System speed: Plenty for web surfing and basic stuff but video performance is low. MPG sample files from Win98 CD (also tested with VCD files) played in average 10~15fps, when USB network connected – it dropped to 3~4fps. Same time plays MPG on PII from WSP hard drive – always full speed. I’m not an IT expert but I think network settings just need some tweaking but it is fully functional. I also test DoC and very disappointed. Reading from it – somehow OK but still slow, writhing takes forever. To not compromise system performance I send DoC in garbage. Oh well. My setup: WSP 48Meg RAM Win98FE clean install, Quantum Fireball 2Gig HD inside, mounted on the top of the power switch (switch flipped upside down). I Dremel out about 1 inch of the lower walls on th 05-16-2000 08:19:20

RE:Need USB help (modified 0 times) George-I-O on the front of the drive so it can fit it over the RAM. Two screws holding drive from a front panel (must be drilled, chassis, not the panel) and one spacer support from the bottom. Everything else is original: BIOS, on board IDE, modem, no overclocking. The network adapter is Netgear EA101 http://www.netgear.com/products/ea101ds.shtml (Was on sale at CC, $19.95 after rebate). I did not and have no plans to test PCI on my WSP. Good luck to everybody who still working on it. (Sorry for shreded thread, I don't know why?!) 05-16-2000 08:21:41

RE:Need USB help (modified 0 times) Brian|S| Glad to help George. I do have a question for you related to networking. I'm very new to networking, and I recently networked two computers with a crossover for the first time. I followed a beginner's networking tutorial which told me to do the following: install network adapter, install IPX/NetBEUI protocols and Microsoft file Sharing, and set the IP for each computer under the TCP/IP properties. After setting the sharing properties for the drives, everything was set up. I could then use network neighborhood and access the other computer. This has worked fine for a couple other systems, but I had problems with my WSP and the USB Linksys adapter. The Linksys would transfer files of any size just fine to another computer, but when trying to write large files or groups of files to the HDD connected to the WSP, the network connection would time out. You've stated that you used NetBEUI to set up your network. How is this different from what I've done? I believe MS File/Printer sharing uses IPX? Perhaps setting up NetBEUI would solve my problems? I'm already planning on using an ISA or PCI network controller ( a 3com PCI will work just fine in it) but am curious as to why some have problems with USB networking while others have not. If I recall correctly, at least one other person with the Netgear *has* had problems, so perhaps these problems can be solved by configuring the network differently. Thanks for any input George, or anyone for that matter :) -Brian 05-18-2000 11:32:06

RE:Need USB help (modified 0 times) George-I-O Brian, I’m new to networking at home as well. Good thing - I can ask IP professionals at work. So I will tell you what I did but the rest is just my speculations. My objective was only to have access to the CD drive on the other PC so I can load anything in WSP without taking it apart and swapping drive. 1)NetBEUI does not require IP address and have minor overhead (mean useful data over total data transferred) – that’s the beauty of it. Under //control panel/networking/protocols for network adapter make sure that for your USB NIC only NetBEUI is present. For this protocol everything that can be set to auto – make sure it is. Other settings like packet size, retries, delays etc – you can play later to optimize performance. If you find there also USB NIC TCP/IP or other protocol – delete it, do not dele TCP/IP for dial-up if you still planning to keep modem and dial internet because most of the providers using it. So keep it slim. I think that multiple protocols will require to keep them open all t 05-18-2000 14:42:08

RE:Need USB help (modified 0 times) George-I-O all the time and as a result bigger overhead leading to clogging USB NIC bottleneck. The reason why USB network slowing down PC – it’s required pulling by host compared to PCI or ISA NIC where no pulling but interrupt executed whenever needed to start communication. Add to it under powered system and the result is hardly working USB network. 2)System configuration: make sure that USB controller does not share any resources w/other devices because newer devises allowed interrupt sharing without a conflict. If you found that sharing exist – make sure in BIOS “PnP aware OS” is set to YES and after that boot Win and in SYSTEM do shuffle resources (off course first turn off auto config for each device at the time). Sometime you have to disable some hardware in BIOS or remove cards to make room to move it (resources) around. If USB the only device on IRQ15 – you are lucky. I would also recommend same thing for video (Blade) adapter because it is awfully slow (separate IRQ off course). 3)Be careful 05-18-2000 14:43:15

RE:Need USB help (modified 0 times) George-I-O 3)Be careful with file/drive sharing. On my WSP it is turned OFF so my PII can’t read anything from WSP but from WSP has full access to PII. If you will live it open – once you in the net (or web) some one can dig in your machine. I hope after you have all of the above done you would be able to transfer any size files. P.s.: I test MP3 play (w/real audio 7player) on the WSP trough the link – I think this is as much as WSP can do. Anything else same time – too much! After USB NIC disconnected – it gets much more life and even some MPG video looks not so bad. Again shreded thread - sorry. 05-18-2000 14:44:31

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