Thread

Old PCI USB cards that work good in old Mac's

Old PCI USB cards that work good in old Mac's 68k 3 posts Dec 12, 2013 — Dec 15, 2013

#1 Thu, 12 Dec 2013 - 06:05

I find the Opti 2 port ones work well.

you can get them all over ebay used.. doesn't matter if it says MAC COMPATIBLE or not.

like this: 6+ bucks, Free shipping etc...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Diamond-Thesis-OPTI-PCI-DUAL-USB-PORT-ADAPTER-CARD-MP861-2-/291029765887?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43c2b9ceff

Same as the one that is in my PM6400 right now.

More specifically:

I/C info:

OPTi

FireLink

82C861

#2 Thu, 12 Dec 2013 - 17:55

The only requirement is that the card uses a OHCI compliant USB chipset since that is what Apple's drivers are designed to work with. Basically any USB card will work except for VIA, which is UHCI based (along with Intel, but they never made PCI USB controllers). The same restriction exists for USB 2.0 cards. While the 2.0 Hub is EHCI, the 1.1 part is UHCI on VIA cards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UHCI#UHCI

#3 Sun, 15 Dec 2013 - 07:54

Trivia: The OPTi FineLink 82C861 chipset was used for the onboard USB on tray load iMacs, as well as a few other early USB Macs, from memory.

But yeah - NJRoadfan's right - any OHCI compliant USB card should work. Just stay away from VIA based cards. (found that out the hard way)