Subj : USB 2.0, Warp 4, ECS and
To   : Will Honea
From : Peter Knapper
Date : Thu Jun 09 2005 08:56 pm

Hi Will,

Great to see you still hanging around here, I thought we might have lost an 
OS/2 champion there.........;-)

The silly part about my questions is that I actually discovered a lot of my own 
answers when I sat down and thought about it a bit.

PK>   1. How can I tell if my current H/W (probably not) is 
PK> likely to work as USB 2.0 H/W (assuming an install of eCS 
PK> 1.2 works), or do I need a motherboard/PCI card based USB 
PK> 2.0 card? I was hoping some S/W can tell what your USB 
PK> chipset is capable of...

 WH> Peter, PCI.EXE should provide the hardware level for you. 

Yep that finds the chips fine thanks. My own research reveals that USB 1.0 
comes in 2 main controller types UHCI and OHCI, while USB 2.0 uses a 3rd type 
that I think is titled ZHCI. All 3 drivers are incompatible with the "other" 
chipsets and therefore the chipsets require their specific drivers.


 WH> It will at
 WH> least give the manf. and part number of the USB controller and hub -
 WH> from there it's just a lookup.  That said, for your purposes all the
 WH> USB level means is the transfer rate.  

Thats exactly what I was trying to determine, what H/W level controllers I had 
because some devices are reported to only work (well???) on USB 2.0 
controllers. I obviously have USB 1 controllers currently, so I was starting to 
think that I should disable the on board USB chips and install a PCI card with 
USB 2.0 support and see how that went. But... I wanted to feel that it was all 
likely to work first........;-)


 WH> One is a very early USB 1.0 (Via 503+) while the laptop has the
 WH> latest and greatest USB 2.0 - and I can't see a difference.

I have seen a USB Portable HD working on 2 different XP boxes, 1 box was USB 1 
the other was USB 2, and the performance difference was VERY obvious.

 WH> It did take the latest level of USB stuff to get a printer to work
 WH> under OS/2 - that would be the determining factor.  Matter of fact,
 WH> that and the PCCard stuff was my major reason for getting eCS and
 WH> access to some of the latest updates.

Oddly enough that is my own thinking......;-) I have eCS 1.2 here and was about 
to move from Warp4 to see if I could get USB working in its full glory. 

PK>   2. Is there a utilty that I can run on a system that can 
PK> report all this level of detail? Usb Resource Manager 0.9.7 
PK> from OS/2 Netlabs does not appear to display down to this 
PK> level of detail...

 WH> Other than PCI.EXE, I would simply go to the mb or the computer makers
 WH> web site (if you don't have the manuals) and look up the USB spec for
 WH> your system.  That's probably quicker than anything else.  

Well my machine is a "bittza", bits of this, bits of that.......;-) Its an ASUS 
CUSL2-C motherboard and I have found that that is definately only USB 
1.......;-(

 WH> If you have a Winxx partition, 

Wash your mouth out lad, I am stricly non M$ here, 3 x Warp 4 and one (heavily 
customised) Linux box running FreeSco........;-) The only machine with Winxx on 
it is my work Laptop, and thats because the company provides it. Needless to 
say its also the one I have spent the most time trying to "fix"...

Now... I don't suppose you have invested in a Digital Camera and a memory stick 
recently have you? Thats the next part of this project, the wife wants to take 
some pictures (not of me I can assure you) and send them overseas.

Cheers...............pk.


--- Maximus/2 3.01
 * Origin: Another Good Point About OS/2 (3:772/1.10)

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