Mac Pro USB 3.0

Question

Mac Pro USB 3.0

Ordered an Allegro USB 3.0 PCIE card for my mid-2010 Hexacore Mac Pro. Installed and recognized by System scanner, but downloaded drivers don't seem to work with OS X 10.7.3, even though they SAY they are compatible with Lion.

Anyone here have success with this card and drivers under latest Lion iteration? I'm trying to use the ports for my USB 3.0 CF/SDXC card reader from Hoodman. I tried drivers from LaCie as suggested in an earlier thread. Driver is recognized by system kernel panics when trying to use port. At least LaCie provides an Uninstaller.

Other suggestions or is this card a waste of time and money?

mrf

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2), 2010 Hexacore 3.33, 3 MBP, i7 imac

Posted on Feb 26, 2012 11:28 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Feb 26, 2012 11:41 AM in response to Marc Feldesman

What are you doing that requires Lion? do you still have SL system around? odd that it wouldn't have native support by this point.

Are you using 32-bit kernel mode during this?

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Answer 2

Feb 26, 2012 11:52 AM in response to The hatter

To answer your questions: 1) I never used Snow Leopard. By the time I bought this machine, it was shipping with Lion. 2) I am running in native 64 bit mode using all 64 bit applications. I didn't see anywhere that the Sonnet drivers were 32 bit. Running in 32 bit would somewhat defeat the purpose of using a USB 3.0 card to read high resolution raw photos into Aperture or CS5.

mrf

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Answer 3

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Feb 26, 2012 12:08 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

Test booting in 32-bit mode

While 64-bit mode helps use CS5 and larger memory address space your apps still run 64-bit for testing

Any Mac Pro can still have Snow Leopard installed.

PCIe SATA has always handled RAID and high performance storage needs just fine and still does.

Operating System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6+

File Name: SonnetALLEGRO-MacOS106B.dmg

File Size: 228.7 KB

Description: This software enables USB 3.0 transfer speeds with Sonnet's Allegro USB 3.0 PCIe (part number USB3M-E) and USB 3.0 ExpressCard/34 (part number USB3-2PM-E34) in computers running Mac OS X. This version fixes an issue with the installer in which the operating system would sometimes incorrectly report the driver as being installed incorrectly.

Note: Sonnet's original USB 3.0 cards, Allegro USB 3.0 PCIe (part number USB3-E) and USB 3.0 ExpressCard/34 (part number USB3-2P-E34), are NOT supported.

Mac Compatibility

Mac Pro

Supports only USB 3.0 and 2.0 storage devices and media readers

Mac OS® X Version 10.6+

Mac OS X Lion compatible

http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=416#position_content

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Answer 4

Feb 26, 2012 12:37 PM in response to The hatter

I don't have Snow Leopard to install. I did try booting in 32 bit mode by holding down the 3&2 keys at boot. Because I have some 64 bit kernel extensions installed to support some software, the result was a kernel panic and inability to boot into 32 bit mode.

As for the Sonnet information, I already had that and I have the updated card USB3M-E purchased directly from Macsales (aka OWC) last week. I downloaded the driver you refer to in your post and it simply does nothing. I suppose it is possible that the Hoodman USB 3.0 RAW Steel card reader is one of ones not compatible. Unfortunately, I don't have any other USB 3 devices to test. I did order a supported Lexar USB 3 reader as a backup for another computer.

I might have to install the Windows driver for my Windows 7 - 64 bit VM just to see if the issue is 64 bits or a faulty driver. I'm part of the Mac Developer Program and so I do get early access to certain OS updates. I've been running 10.7.3 for awhile, but when the release version came out, I did the Combo Upgrade to make certain everything was identical to the shipping version.

At this point, I guess I'm going to have to wait for my inquiry to Sonnet and to OWC to be answered, hopefully tomorrow. I did ask whether the card was supposed to support 64 bit OS. It seems to me that if it is Lion compatible that it should be 64 bit out of the box. I also asked whether the Hoodman reader was supported, since the FAQs list Transcend readers as NOT supported, I suppose it could be just reader incompatibility. However, when I look at About This Mac, it shows a USB 3.0 card in the PCI listing, but definitely lists NO driver. When I installed the LaCie driver, it definitely showed YES to driver, but unfortunately the system didn't like the combination.

Thanks for your assistance. It looks like I'm just going to have to wait.

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Answer 5

Feb 26, 2012 6:55 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

I think the issue is either with the driver(s), or more likely, with the USB 3.0 device attached. I downloaded the official drivers for Windows 7 x64 and it doesn't recognize the USB host controller either. Tomorrow we'll find out.

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Answer 6

Feb 26, 2012 7:38 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

Readers would love to know the story.

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Answer 7

Feb 26, 2012 7:47 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

Marc Feldesman wrote:

Ordered an Allegro USB 3.0 PCIE card for my mid-2010 Hexacore Mac Pro. Installed and recognized by System scanner, but downloaded drivers don't seem to work with OS X 10.7.3, even though they SAY they are compatible with Lion.

Anyone here have success with this card and drivers under latest Lion iteration? I'm trying to use the ports for my USB 3.0 CF/SDXC card reader from Hoodman. I tried drivers from LaCie as suggested in an earlier thread. Driver is recognized by system kernel panics when trying to use port. At least LaCie provides an Uninstaller.

Other suggestions or is this card a waste of time and money?

mrf

Does it work with 10.7.3? In a word, yes. As a test, I just booted into 10.7.3 on a Mac Pro like yours with the Allegro card, and a Western Digital USB 3.0 MyBook started up without difficulty. It also works in Snow Leopard which I normally use. The card has been in use a while but I remember initially having difficulty with it and also tried the LaCie driver without success. I don't believe their Uninstaller did a complete job, and I had to open their installer package, look into the info.plist and then search and destroy any instance of a .PXHCD driver (Sonnet's is an .SXHCD driver). There is also a conflict with VMWare Fusion, at least version 3, which is solved by a reboot. And I've have noticed that using the WD drive with the Sonnet card consumes 100% of one thread in the Hexcore while FW 800 might take 3% for the same type of transfer. But the Sonnet is fast when the drive is.

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Answer 8

Feb 26, 2012 7:52 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

It shows up, but it shows no driver installed. I'm running VMWare 4.0.3 with win 7 x86 and 10.7.3. Sounds like a search and destroy mission might be called for to locate and kill extraneous drivers. I still don't know about the compatibility of the Hoodman reader, but that may be a separate problem. When you look at About this Mac|More Info|PCI does it show both the card and the driver?

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Answer 9

Feb 26, 2012 8:00 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

Marc Feldesman wrote:

It shows up, but it shows no driver installed. I'm running VMWare 4.0.3 with win 7 x86 and 10.7.3. Sounds like a search and destroy mission might be called for to locate and kill extraneous drivers. I still don't know about the compatibility of the Hoodman reader, but that may be a separate problem. When you look at About this Mac|More Info|PCI does it show both the card and the driver?

Now I'm back in Snow Leopard. System Profiler does show both the card and a driver installed. I boot in verbose mode and the Sonnet drivers appear very early in the boot process so adding them to Win 7 inside of Fusion shouldn't work. I don't know if it matters but the Sonnet card and drivers were installed in Snow Leopard and then Lion was installed over it. I didn't do a driver install once Lion was in control.

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Answer 10

Feb 26, 2012 10:52 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

I watched the boot process and noted that "com.sonnet.drivers.SXHCD 1.0.7" installed early, as you pointed out, but that the search for the actual device didn't occur until very near the end of the boot process. I went on a snark hunt looking for the "com.sonnet.drivers.SXHCD 1.0.7" driver, but nothing turned it up. Any idea where it is "supposed" to be installed. I've looked in all the usual places (/Library/Preferences/....,) as well as doing a deep search with Spotlight, Path Finder. I suppose I should use grep at the command line, but I'm not comfortable with grep.

Lengthy email sent to Sonnet. Waiting for a reply tomorrow. OWC thinks I might have a bad card, but wants to hear what Sonnet says first.

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Answer 11

Feb 27, 2012 9:27 AM in response to Marc Feldesman

Marc Feldesman wrote:

I watched the boot process and noted that "com.sonnet.drivers.SXHCD 1.0.7" installed early, as you pointed out, but that the search for the actual device didn't occur until very near the end of the boot process. I went on a snark hunt looking for the "com.sonnet.drivers.SXHCD 1.0.7" driver, but nothing turned it up. Any idea where it is "supposed" to be installed. I've looked in all the usual places (/Library/Preferences/....,) as well as doing a deep search with Spotlight, Path Finder. I suppose I should use grep at the command line, but I'm not comfortable with grep.

Lengthy email sent to Sonnet. Waiting for a reply tomorrow. OWC thinks I might have a bad card, but wants to hear what Sonnet says first.

it's odd but I don't see "com.sonnet.drivers.SXHCD 1.0.7" at all in the boot process. Also, SXHCD drivers loading appear on screen early in Verbose Mode but don't appear at all in the system.log as seen in the Console and 1.0.7 never shows up, just SXHCD. That driver is in /System/Library/Extensions/SXHCD.kext. Look in Contents/MacOS for the actual file. BTW, I've found that EasyFind from the App Store will reveal stuff that might not turn up in Spotlight, though I'm not sure if it will do as well in Lion as in SL (I was setting up my wife's MacBook Pro yesterday and tried it in Lion and it didn't find things I was expecting it to reveal).

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Answer 12

Feb 27, 2012 10:29 AM in response to FatMac-MacPro

Found all instances of the SXHDC in kexts and in Receipts. Deleted all of them. Rebooted. Downloaded drivers again. Installed them following the instructions after first inspecting all of the plist files and pkginfo files. Found out what I was looking for and the string "com.sonnet.driver.SXDHC 1.0.7" is exactly what is supposed to be there. However, no love once the drivers are installed and the system reboots. System Information still shows "no" to driver under Lion. Boot still shows com.sonnet.driver.SXDHC loading early and the USB 3 device loading late. Beginning to think that either (a) the card is working as designed and the information in System Information is reported incorrectly as "no" and/or (b) the card is defective and/or (c) the Hoodman device isn't compatible. Since I have no other USB 3.0 devices (until my Nikon D800 arrives <g>) to test, I will have to wait until Sonnet returns my support request.

EasyFind was a "find". Thanks for pointing it out. I had been using "Find Any File" with mixed results. You have been helpful and I've awarded you points for helping out. It would be nice to get this matter resolved. By Weds I will have a Lexar USB 3 reader, which IS supported explicitly.

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Answer 13

Feb 27, 2012 11:07 AM in response to Marc Feldesman

Lengthy chat with Sonnet this a.m. Finally diagnosed the problem. Dead card. The ONE thing I stupidly forgot to check was whether the card would work with ANY USB device. I plugged in several different USB 2.0 devices and they didn't work either. That confirmed the diagnosis. OWC will send replacement. Hopefully that will take care of the problem, and by the time the replacement arrives, I'll have the Lexar card reader to test as well.

Thanks all for you helpful suggestions.

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Answer 14

Feb 27, 2012 12:16 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

Marc Feldesman wrote:...Since I have no other USB 3.0 devices (until my Nikon D800 arrives <g>) to test, I will have to wait until Sonnet returns my support request.

EasyFind was a "find". Thanks for pointing it out. I had been using "Find Any File" with mixed results. You have been helpful and I've awarded you points for helping out. It would be nice to get this matter resolved. By Weds I will have a Lexar USB 3 reader, which IS supported explicitly.

What are you going to do with all those pixels? 😉

And thanks for the points. Back in Mac Classic days, I used to rely heavily on FastFind in Norton Utilities, and EasyFind is very close to that.

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