USB support impossible with System 7?

I had my TAM running with a USB card using System 7.6.1.  The HDD corrupted recently, so I installed a CF card for quick and reliable booting.  I now can't get USB working on System 7, although I know for certain that I had it working.

I asked for advice on this last month, but wasn't able to get the info I needed.  I tried manually copying the files from 8.6 to 7.6.1, but no dice.  Stuffed if I can remember how I did it, but it was not through hackery.  I plug and play to get things working, so I must have done it relatively easy - just need to remember the steps!

You think it was just dragging over extensions?

That's what I thought, because although I don't remember exactly how I did it, it would have been something like that.  Hmmm?

I have tried the version from 8.0 iMac to a powermac 6400 in system 7.6.1 and could not get my 1.1 card working.  But I am trying also for you.

Are you sure it was't FireWire you were thinking of? FireWire is first supported in Mac OS 7.6.

No, I have a USB 1.1 card with two slots, one of those Opti cards that seem to work so well in the TAM.  Never had anything FireWire.

And before anyone says it, I know it sounds very unlikely, but I am OCD on using System 7 on the TAM and definitely had this working.

I have a Macally USB card with an NEC chipset. Maybe  I'll fool with it later today to see what I can come up with.

Hi jsarchibald and Syntho,

A thought has come to mind: if ye can get your hands on a development installer ISO of Mac OS 8.0, it might very well have proto-versions of the USB extensions. If my Mac history is correct, what became Mac OS 8.0 was in development as Mac OS 7.7 or 7.8 (which is still System 7 and therefore might be usable in Mac OS 7.6). The extensions are not in the Mac OS 8.0 release, so they may been still buggy at the time. They were released with the Bondi blue iMac and 8.1, so the drivers were around in 1998.

When I thought of proto-USB-drivers, i also wondered whether haplain has any lying in his wonderful collection. He might be a good person to ask.

Armor, good idea, that might be a great place to look

Another idea, especially for those with old magazines: what was the first USB possibility for the Mac? I had thought that it was the iMac. But now that I think of it, there may have been a third party card *with their own drivers* that came out in 1997 or 1998. I was a diehard SCSI/ADB man at the time and I had learnt about FireWire in the reviews for Mac OS 7.6.

If there was a very early USB card with mac drivers, then eBay et al is the place to scour. Also, it might be worth looking out for the PowerMacs of the day (e.g. PM 7300 | PM 9600 | Beige G3 etc) that may have been equiped with them when they were bought. You would need to find a buyer that bought the machine to be sure.

jrsarchibald had it running but lost files, is trying to get it working again too

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/13600-usb-pci-card-into-tam-running-system-761/

I just tried dropping all kinds of extensions into the Extensions folder in 7.6.1, even some that were hacked to work on OS8.1. Didn't get far at all.

Sorry to hear that.

jsarchibald, how could you have the secret sauce, then lose it!?

Aaaaaaah!  Tell me about it!

If I could do it, it isn't that hard.  Surely someone here will know how to do it?

Do you remember where the extensions came from? Was it mostly the stock 1.4.1 drivers from the USB pack that we all know, or was it some hacked drivers from somewhere else?

There's gotta be some third party USB drivers for System 7. I don't know how they wouldn't have tried to capitalize on USB. Microsoft had it implemented in Windows 95 versions early as 8/1996. 

I'm really thinking there's gotta be something, since the first PCI Macs debuted around (earlier) than this time too.

I'm determined to get this working...

Admittedly, from what I test, I didn't test with a USB thumb drive. I think you've got to have those USB Mass Storage drivers in order to get thumb drives to show up but correct me if I'm wrong. I only tried with a USB mouse, so maybe I should try again but this time with a USB drive.

As I think I had mentioned, there is an option in the OS 9.1 and 9.2.x installers titled, "USB Adapter Card Support", or something to that effect. Has anyone tried those extensions?

c

Anything from Mac OS 8.5+ is no good for 68k Macs, but it might work for the earlier PPC models.

The USB Adapter Card Support thing is something I stumbled upon elsewhere but it won't install on 7.6.1. I'm using a 9600 which is the last system to boot 7.6.1 I believe.

After doing some searching on this topic it appears that back around the turn of the millennium there were certain extensions, when edited using ResEdit, that could provide USB on System 7. However, I was unable to locate any detailed information, such as which extensions, what edits were needed, etc...

I feel the answers lie in the archives of various Mac specific newsgroups with posts from that peri-millenial period.

As a random aside, color me not getting why you wouldn't want to run OS 8+ on a machine capable of it. You *really* should be using HFS+ on modern-size disk drives, and that includes USB thumb drives. Plain HFS has the same limit as DOS FAT16 on the number of allocatable blocks so you start wasting a *lot* of space (assuming you're storing small files) once your disk sizes get into the gigabyte range.

System 7 doesn't have the bloat that 8.6/9.1 has. It seems speedier and it has all I need.

Here you go:

http://www.silentway.com/mac-tips-better-os-9-settings

That combined with the greater amount of PPC native code in the post 8.0 OS versions will probably negate any speed advantage of 7.6...

Paralel said:

After doing some searching on this topic it appears that back around the turn of the millennium there were certain extensions, when edited using ResEdit, that could provide USB on System 7. However, I was unable to locate any detailed information, such as which extensions, what edits were needed, etc...

I feel the answers lie in the archives of various Mac specific newsgroups with posts from that peri-millenial period.

Click to expand...

It's too bad that the xlr8yourmac discussion forums are gone. Is there an archive anywhere? I bet that if that was discussed anywhere it was probably discussed there. That was the hot spot for that kind of stuff back then.

You might also try a search through the Macgurus forums and possibly the LEM List archives for the appropriate machines -- PCI PowerMacs, back before they moved to Google Groups.

Wasn't there some kind of resedit group or email list or newsletter way back when? Something about that is tickling my memory.

jsarchibald got this working with drag and drop. Oh how I wish we could find that magic combo again...

It looks like at least some of the xlr8 bbs was saved into the internet archive.

I know some of you are calling bs on this (but you've been polite by not saying it). But I am OCD on detail and only ran System 7 when using the TAM with the HDD. Shame I wasn't OCD enough to update the thread here though!

Use 8.x, drag and drop 7.x Finder, remove extensions (you don't need Appearance Manager anymore) and you're done