Q: ASUS USB 3.1 PCI Card in Mac Pro running El Capitan ?

Are drivers required for the card to work in Yosemite?

That card, which you say provides Windows support only, undoubtedly requires a Driver to function at all Mac OS X.

Under Apple's new rules for ElCapitan, kernel extension Drivers must be signed with a recognized developer certificate, or they are simply NOT LOADED.

This is a feature of Mac OS X 10.11 ElCapitan, and is well-documented.

My personal opinion: You did not do your homework before installing this card in that version of Mac OS X 10.11 ElCapitan. You caused your own problem, and the bad things you imply about Apple are rubbish.

There are various USB3.1 cards on the market and none of them come with Mac drivers, all of them rely on using the built-in generic Apple provided USB driver. Of the various USB3.1 cards that I have seen details of listing the chipset used, they seem to all use the same chipset making them from a computer point of view pretty much identical and not needing different drivers.

Apple's Yosemite driver while it does enable these cards at least to work from a basic point of view is not fully USB3.1 aware since it seems the card is only reported as a USB3 card in System Report. This may or may not mean it is limited to USB3 speed.

As an aside I have been considering getting a USB3.1 card myself for my Mac Pro but had been hoping to get a 3.1 card with two type C connectors and not needing an internal power lead. The nearest so far I have seen is this Asrock card but it only has one type C and one type A connector. See

http://www.asrock.com/mb/spec/card.asp?Model=USB%203.1/A%2BC

Update: I also found this one which seems to have two type-C connectors and no internal power need but I have seen no reports from Mac users about it unlike the Asrock card which has been reported as 'working' under Yosemite. See - https://www.usbgear.com/CG-2PTCX1PCIe.html

The limited reports I have seen suggest it works identically to the Asus card since they use the same chipset and both rely on Apple's generic driver.

It would seem from your report which is the only one I have so far seen of a user trying such a card under El Capitan that Apple have unfortunately crippled support for these cards compared to Yosemite. As you are using the built-in Apple driver it is not down to SIP or needing a signed Kernel Extension as might have been the case if you had been using a third-party driver. (Remember there are no third-party USB3.1 drivers for Mac.)

It might be worth considering signing up for Apple's Public Beta program here https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/ downloading and testing a test version of El Capitan and reporting the issue. Maybe Apple will then 'fix' this problem.

I am personally hoping that as Apple start shipping more Mac models with built-in USB3.1 that support will improve, so far the only Mac model with USB3.1 is the MacBook 12" all other models are still only fitted with USB3.0.

When the card used with Yosemite was it a fresh install of Yosemite?

I ask because El Capitan tightened up driver signing and if yo had previously install some drive in Yosemite (or pervious version if you upgraded) they likely will not work with El Capitan.

The following says where to look in EC to see which previous drivers were quarantined in EC

http://www.macissues.com/2015/10/06/how-to-see-software-disabled-by-os-x-10-11-e l-capitan/

Penguiner wrote:

 

Hi John LOCKWOOD,

 

The card is indeed reported as a simple USB 3.0 card.

When I hook up a USB 3.0 case to it, I am able to achieve speeds up to 380Mb/s on a SSD.

I will try to get an USB 3.1 case to enclose the drive into and see what I get.

 

Regards.

 

FRED

In theory USB3.1 will run at a max of 10Gbps aka. 1.25GBps however this will probably be much faster than your SSD and/or enclosure will be able to do.

The following are example USB3.1 SSD enclosures but due to limitations of current SSD drives and the fact it is only a 2 lane PCI interface will not be able to reach full USB3.1 speed. You can get a direct PCIe to SSD adapter for fitting an SSD internally which will be as fast if not faster, however the advantage of using a USB3.1 enclosure is that it is removable/swappable and should in theory be close to the same speed. Currently the expected top speed for a single PCI SSD is ~1500MBps, you can get more than this by RAID0 with multiple SSD drives.

Note: There are several similar examples on Amazon, NGFF (Next Generation Form Factor) is the type of SSD used in laptops these days and is faster than the old style SATA or MSATA SSD drives that some other USB3.1 enclosures are for. If you are buying an SSD specifically for this you want an NGFF type also known as M2.

Note: USB drives attached externally via the USB 3.0 or 3.1 PCIe card will not be bootable.

See http://www.amazon.com/Portable-USB-C-PCI-E-Enclosure-Y410P/dp/B00X3M23UW/

and http://www.amazon.com/SNANSHI-Type-C-USB-C-Adapter-Enclosure/dp/B017O6OFUS/

Bought a Dodocool DC22, same chipset ASM1142. Looks same as ASRock version, PCB little different, needs power through a SATA power port (I already power loose SSDs inside, attached to a SATAIII card with internal ports, so was easy to get this).

Mac Pro 4,1 10.11.5 and now 10.11.6

Below is the PCI tab of System Information. All looks good there. Says Driver Installed.

Nothing mounts or being shown as attached in USB tab.

Will send the card back I suppose. Specs says compatible Mac from 10.6. Their support, seller or original company, are useless. They don't even know what I am talking about.

PXS3:

Type: USB eXtensible Host Controller

  Driver Installed: Yes

  MSI: Yes

  Bus: PCI

  Slot: Slot-3

  Vendor ID: 0x1b21

  Device ID: 0x1242

  Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x1b21

  Subsystem ID: 0x1242

  Revision ID: 0x0000

  Link Width: x2

  Link Speed: 5.0 GT/s