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Orico USB 3 Card seen but not working

I have a Mac Pro 2008 with OS X 10.8.3 and I just installed an ORICO PFU3-4P PCIe USB 3.0 card because I read on another thread on here that because it used the Fresco 1100 chipset, OS X would see it natively.


Well, now that I have it plugged in, my Mac Pro sees it, but anything I connect to it (from HDD docking stations to USB 2.0 flash drives) it cannot see.


It does see it and says it has a driver.


User uploaded file


Any help would be really appreciated.

Posted on Apr 30, 2013 7:58 PM

Reply
15 replies

Apr 30, 2013 11:27 PM in response to Mitchell Friedlaender

So, in reading online, it looks like the 4-port version may not work with the Mac Pro. The exact reason for this, I'm not sure. My guess is that it requires too much power for 4 ports, even though my attachments are powered by an external power supply.


There is a Molex power port on the card, which I read wasn't necessary, at least in the 2-port version (PFU3-2P). I am going to just exchange this card for that.


I would usually connect the power for it, but my ATI graphics card requires all the extra power I can use.

Sep 22, 2013 2:46 AM in response to Mitchell Friedlaender

Did you get the 2 port version working without the additional power? I got the 4 port one working fine but it did need the extra power cable and it wasn't actually all that straightforward. It needs 5V so the 12V supply that is available for the graphics cards isn't suitable. You can get it from the disk and optical drive connectors but I found routing the cable tricky. I'm sure it doesn't draw very much power unless you have a lot of connector powered USB3 devices. 4 external hard drives could take quite a lot - the USB3 spec allows for higher currents than the USB2 spec.

Nov 23, 2013 3:34 PM in response to Mitchell Friedlaender

I had the same problem on my 2010 MacPro with OSX 10.9: the 4-port Orico card, powered, showed up as having its driver loaded but drives did not mount and were not detected.

Following a hint from an Amazon reviewer named Jack, I installed the open source driver GenericUSBXHCI and that took care of the problem. Now all drives mount and are recognized. You may want to give this a try before returning the card.

Also of note, my system would get stuck at the Apple logo on startup until I got rid of the drivers I had installed to support other inexpensive cards I had tried in the past (none of them worked correctly and the only card/driver combination that worked ended up causing kernel panics on a daily basis).

So far, over 36 hours of uptime with the Orico card, multiple drives connected and disconnected, lots of data transferred, not a single problem. I love this card!

Nov 23, 2013 5:14 PM in response to Mitchell Friedlaender

There's always a source. I have one of the 4 port cards coming in the mail, and I will put a splitter on the cable going to one of the BD drives I have to get my 5 & 12V I need for the Molex connector.


Worse case scenario fremove the 4th internal drive, and get the power from there. I have a USB 3.0 dock, and can just put the HD in that.


Can't wait to play with USB 3.0

Nov 24, 2013 1:53 AM in response to Russell Tilly

Does that mean with the 3rd party driver that you don't need external power? With the latest Mountain Lion and Mavericks I have found that I don't need external drivers. I've just checked the specifications and a 4 port USB3 card might need to supply 6A whereas the PCI-E limit seems to be 3A. Also PCI-E only provides 12V and 3.3V but USB needs a 5V supply so even if the power was OK, I can see that you might need a proper 5V supply to make the card work. Anyway I've installed 2 of these cards now, and once you've worked out how to route the cable properly then getting power from the Molex connector in the optical bay is actually straightforward, and if both optical bays are in use then you can just use a splitter like SiliconSam suggested.I'm just relived that it all seems to work properly because USB3 seems about double the speed when used with external hard drives. I even found some instructions here:


http://boffinblogger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/usb3-on-macpro-hackintosh.html

Mar 5, 2014 4:22 AM in response to eddimax1

I didn't install anything to get the Orico PFU3-4P working. Mavericks just works with this card as long as you give it external power. Checking on my system I can see that the AppleUSBXHCI.kext is actually inside the IOUSBFamily.kext but this should already be there. Apple only supports USB3 on fairly recent Macs so the driver is only in recent system versions. I'm not sure exactly when it turned up though but the later versions of Mountain Lion certainly support this card. I'm not sure whether the driver works perfectly all the time - I had some issues with an external SATA dock - but mostly I'm very happy with it.

Orico USB 3 Card seen but not working

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