Is there anybody, who knows a PC card for USB2.0 port working with PowerBook G4 Titanium? Also, how often I have to use an external power supply to use a PC card for USB 2.0?
Hi, Nagayosdhi. Here are four such cards. There are probably many others that will also work in Macs. You may have to install additional software to support USB 2.0; I don't know whether or not the appropriate software is installed by default on Macs that don't have USB 2.0 ports at the time the OS is installed.
The use of an external power supply is probably essential if one is driving an external USB 2.0 hard drive or other power-hungry peripheral. Some adapter cards come with AC power adapters, others with cords to draw power from the computer's built-in USB 1.1 ports, some with neither (very undesirable, I would think), and some may come with both.
Thanks, eww, for your useful information. Looks like the first one provided by SIIG would be a good choice because it can get additional power either from USB or AC power adapter. According to the manual from SIIG, Mac OS 10.2.8 or later have built-indriver support for this card, but I am not still sure if this is correct until I try out this card.
Do these usb adapters stick out of the side of the powerbook very far? I'd go with this option if it doesn't stick out of the side of my tibook and run a risk of getting busted off.
Hi, John. The adapters all stick out of the side of the Powerbook half an inch to an inch, since a USB port doesn't fit into the height of the slot. There is some risk of breaking off the end of the protruding card if the Powerbook is transported carelessly with the card in place. But if you want USB 2 on your Tibook, there's no other alternative.
Hi, woodgnome. I'd suggest testing your card(s) with other USB devices before giving up on them. Some iPods have required factory built-in USB ports and won't work with USB adapter cards. I don't know whether the Shuffle is among them. If you have a USB flash drive, printer, or other USB device you could plug into the card, do so and see whether it's recognized.
If you find that no USB device is recognized when plugged into the card(s), it may be that the SIIG driver needs to be updated for compatibility with Tiger. Have you checked for a newer version?
Having said this the SIIG driver is only good up to 10.3 and it appears that OS X beyond this should offer native support. Not convinced yet about this last point.
Interestingly it seems, despite feedback to the contrary, that the SIIG driver didn't install the kernal extensions it expected to. But then again the native support didn't work [with the iPod shuffle].
I have been searching through the forum to see whether anyone has recommended the ADSTECH cardbus for use with the Mac. It has 2 USB 2.0 ports and 2 firewire ports and includes an external power supply. Unfortunately, my 1G PowerBook has been freezing repeatedly when I've attempted to use the card. The system is recognizing it, and I've even mounted my iPod from it. But that's as far as I get before a Finder freeze which is resolved only by a hardware shutdown, i.e., not a forced quit.
One other question: does Tiger 10.4 include a driver for this sort of device? Or should I attempt to work with the included driver, which is vintage 2003?
Ettor: I think you need to talk with ADS's tech support people. They should be able to answer your questions about Tiger compatibility and required software, and may be able to suggest what's going on with your iPod and any other devices you've tried to connect through the card.
Hello everybody,
I had been searching for a compatible USB 2.0 card ( since I wanted a new iPod ), and most of the ones mentioned in this thread are not found here in France. I had tried the Adaptec, and it didn't work at all.
So I thought I should share my success with the current Belkin Card, very easy to find here.
Under 10.4.4. it was recognized without problem. No need for any extra driver, although it says on the package that MacOSX needs one.
I don't need the card's power supply when the computer is on ... power supply ( when on battery, it didn't work without the cards power supply ).
File transfers are very fast now for both my Photo camera and my iPod nano.;-)
I hope this helps.
Regards
d5vir
I just got the Belkin card too, just to use the eyeTV TV Mini gizmo on my old TiBook. after a lot of messing around I thought why not plug in the power adaptor, and now it works fine. However it would be better if it [Belkinb card]
drew the power from the Apple power adaptor only.
Hi, mikebelluk, and welcome to Apple Discussions. The issue is that the USB ports in the card and/or the Powerbook can only offer so much current to connected devices. A device that requires more power than that must have its own power supply to work. You would undoubtedly find, if you tried a variety of devices with a range of different power requirements, that some of them would happily run off the power available to them from the CardBus slot.
To be able to offer substantially more power through its built-in USB and FireWire busses and/or through the CardBus slot, a Powerbook would have to be able to dispose of the additional heat that a higher power draw would generate internally, and that's an engineering problem that the designers may not have wanted to take on in such a limited space. It would also be necessary for the Powerbook's battery to be able to supply the same amount of juice to those busses when the AC adapter was disconnected or the AC power suddenly failed — another design challenge that may not have fit into Apple's engineering plans. Apple desktops can provide substantially more power through their ports than the laptop models do, because they have neither the cooling-space constraints nor the battery constraints that laptops have.
I bought a SIIG Cardbus USB 2.0 card and downloaded the drivers for it from SIIG website. They installed correctly, and the System Profiler shows my 2 native 1.1 ports and the 2 'high-speed' ports on the card. However, when I plug my iPod video into the card, it shows a max speed of only 12mbps and the transfers are dead slow as before when plugged into 1.1 ports. Also, the driver the 'high-speed' bus is using says Apple and not SIIG even though they are installed correctly in the proper location according to instructions. I don't see any newer driver available on SIIG's site so, does anyone know how to get 2.0 speeds from this card? My P'Mac G4 runs 2.0 at full speed on its PCI card I added using SIIG drivers under Tiger.
Hi, MacMikey. Sounds like you need to have a phone conversation with SIIG tech support. I wonder whether it's possible that Apple's drivers override SIIG's when both are installed. Just a hypothesis, but you might ask SIIG about it.
Hi. Seems that I am in the same predicament as a lot of others... I need a USB 2 card, I ordered a PCMCIA card, but what I have received is:
BELKIN 802.11G
which claims to be a "Kabellose Hi-Speed Notebook -Netzwerkkarte"
... and that can't possibly be it, can it?
I'm afraid to even open the box in case I have to send it back... didn't think a USB 2 port had anything to do with wireless networking??
