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Trouble getting USB to work on socket 7 mother board

J

J. Radon

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 17, 2018
Messages
87
Location
Troutdale, OR
I'm trying to get USB working on my win98 pc. The PM 8600 motherboard has a pin block for two USB headers between some of the ISA slots.
I've tried both installing a PCI USB card, and directly connecting USB ports to the motherboard USB pinout, but nothing is working.

To list some more technical things to narrow down a solution:
-I've installed the "nusb36e-2694.exe" USB driver, following instructions here: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-i...on-windows-98/
-I've tried testing with both this PCI card (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005JE2U82), and with USB ports directly connected to the motherboards USB pins
-I've tried testing with two different devices; a 4gb USB drive formated to fat 32 and a USB optical mouse
-On the USB drive I placed a single txt file titled "test.txt" with the text "test"

On my testing I've found that the PCI card kinda works sometimes, but it's really unstable. The card itself doesn't cause any issues, but once I place a device in one of it's ports its bound to either cause the system to fail posting entirely, or to crash/hang randomly after booting into win 98. I only got the usb drive to display once, and I did see the txt file, but before I could open it windows crashed.

With the PCI USB card the following behavior seems fairly consistent:
-plugging a USB device in after booting will almost always cause the system to immediately crash
-removing a USB device in the rare case that it has booted will certainly cause the system to crash
-trying to access the contents of a USB drive will cause the system to crash.

the USB pinout on the motherboard doesn't seem much better. connecting ports to the pins and plugging in a flash drive causes the led inside the drive to light up like it's working, but windows doesn't show a drive in explorer like the rare chance it would with the PCI card. Trying to plug an optical USB mouse into a port connected to the motherboard USB pinout didn't work at all either.

I'm not sure what's left to do.

Should I try to find a better card? Am I doing something wrong? Is there anything else I can test? Is there a limitation in windows 98 that i'm not privy to?

My main concern is trying to get a USB mouse working, because this 3 button identity trackball mouse I fixed up is giving me terrible hand pain/cramps.
There's a DIN and PS/2 port on the back, but the PS/2 port is inaccessible by this case, and i'm pretty sure both are keyboard only (or at least, the only accessible din port is being used by my AT keyboard)
 
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Tough problem. Take a look at your W98 'Device Manager' and see if you have any yellow warning tabs on any of your devices. If so, you may have a driver problem. If I remember correctly, W98 has been touch and go with respect to USB but that's not helping you.

I think you are experiencing a driver problem. You may have to search for your motherboard's chipset drivers if you don't have the original mobo CD. Your present USB driver nusb36e-2694.exe should work but may be to your advantage to experiment with NUSB33.EXE or the older NUSB20.EXE.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Amptron did publish a driver set that included the 8600B, you might give it a try.
Click to expand...

I tried that driver and it doesn't seem to work.

When I run the program it pops up a window asking "install microsoft USB supplement to your system?"
selecting 'yes' and agreeing to the license agreement yields "a previous version of USB supplement has been found. You need to do one of the following: a) uninstall previous version if you have installed already b) re-install windows 95 revision b c) if you have already run this setup in this session, reboot."

It seems like the driver is a windows 95 one, and it's the only one listed for my board on amptrons website on wayback.

edit: I also additionally checked all the other captures one by one on wayback and found nothing. My board is revision A, and the driver file for usb for revision A is either missing or hasn't worked for all captures. I also tried a revison B file, and that didn't work either.
 
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I'm thinking the PCI USB adapter isn't gonna be my best bet, but I'm really hoping I can at least get the two mouse ports on the motherboard to work.
I'm not too worried about USB for data transfer or storage, I mostly just wanna get a working optical mouse.
I have a ton of USB mice lying around, and if I can avoid it i'd rather not try and shell out for a legacy port mouse or legacy port to ps/2 adapter.

I might try a fresh install of windows, maybe I screwed up a driver setting somewhere, who knows.

I'll probably also try Agent Orange's suggestion of rolling back to older NUSB drivers if that fails.

I unfortunately don't have any of the original disks or floppies that came with the computer, as I inherited it from my grandfather that passed away a few years ago, and I believe it was initially purchased as a prebuilt office computer, so i'm not sure it even came with any disks.

edit: I definitely think this PCI USB card is a lost cause, upon closer inspection it looks like a piece of junk. The traces are poorly laid out with some so close they're practically bridging, the soldering is bad, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the issues are from the central BGA chip not being seated well.
Guess that's what I get for buying a cheapo pci card off amazon. Maybe I'd have better luck with a more reputable one.
 
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J. Radon said:
My board is revision A,.
Click to expand...
I had a quick look at the specs for your board on archive org and saw this:-

•PM-8600A (rev. 2.5) does not support USB features. Only, the
PM-8600B (rev. 5.5) has a fully functional USB controller.
Click to expand...
You might get USB working for Mass storage if you can find an old USB controller with compatible chipset for use with the "nusb36e-2694.exe" driver.
 
Malc said:
I had a quick look at the specs for your board on archive org and saw this:-


You might get USB working for Mass storage if you can find an old USB controller with compatible chipset for use with the "nusb36e-2694.exe" driver.
Click to expand...

where did you see that?
The manual I have refers to the USB pins on the motherboard, and they certainly do exist on my physical board, so why wouldn't it support usb?
There is a 10 pin block divided up 5x2 labled "USB" right on the mask, and in the PM-8600 manual it shows that it's a standard usb pinout with two ground pins on the ground side, set up to support two USB ports, one per row.
 
J. Radon said:
...where did you see that?
Click to expand...
Click on the link that Chuck supplied in post #3
Click on the Drivers link in the left column
Scroll down to "PM8600A and B busmastering PCI ide drivers
Click on the FAQ link
Click on the "Link to PM8600 Info"

The manual I have refers to the USB pins on the motherboard, and they certainly do exist on my physical board, so why wouldn't it support usb?
There is a 10 pin block divided up 5x2 labled "USB" right on the mask, and in the PM-8600 manual it shows that it's a standard usb pinout with two ground pins on the ground side, set up to support two USB ports, one per row.
Click to expand...
USB support in Win 95 / 98 is POOP, + In the early days of USB it wasn't unusual for manufactures to ship boards with non-functional / Faulty USB controllers . I have an early pentium system or 2 where the onboard USB is non-functional.
 
That is true, particularly in the P1 era boards. I had a Tyan motherboard with USB that I could never get working. I suppose one could install a PCI USB card to get things to work, although PCI was also in its infancy then.
 
Aww, that's a bummer.
I'll just call it a loss then.

Like I said before, I'm not too worried about USB storage; I have plenty of blank CD's and about 500 floppies in a couple of boxes. The speed would be nice, but it's not all that important.

What I'm really bummed about is mice. I have a ton of USB mice I'm not using that could go great with this system, but without usb support in left with this really un-ergonomic three button track ball that connects via serial port.
 
Another option might be to try Windows ME if you have it with your new USB controller, Win ME has much better Driver / USB support, A lot of people don't like ME but i've found it to be a rock solid stable system, YMMV
 
Chuck(G) said:
Isn't there a PS/2 connector for a mouse right next to the keyboard connector?
Click to expand...

I thought it was a second keyboard port. Can PS2 keyboard or mouse? It thought it was one or the other...
I'm using the DIN port next to it for my keyboard, but to get to the PS2 port with my current case I'd have to Dremel some of it out.
I kinda already tried to a few years ago, but I mangled it pretty bad, and only recently I managed to bend things back (kind of) into place.
I do have better tools for metal cutting now though, so maybe it's time to try again?
 
Chuck(G) said:
I suppose one could install a PCI USB card to get things to work, although PCI was also in its infancy then.
Click to expand...

I've got an HP Vectra 500 series Pentium (not MMX) that doesn't have USB onboard. I installed an NEC chipset USB PCI card that I got with an MSI Dual Athlon MP motherboard years ago. They tossed the card in to provide USB 2.0 support so that they didn't have add it to the motherboard. Anyway, the NEC chip USB card works fine in my Pentium, once I load those NUSB drivers for mass storage listed above.
 
Most USB mice will work when plugged into a PS/2 port using a simple passive adapter. I have heard that some more recent mice have dropped this feature, but I don't know when the cutoff is.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Nope--the mini-DIN works fine for PS/2 mouse. Get a hand metal nibbler--very inexpensive. With care, you can make very professional-looking holes.

Very inexpensive
Click to expand...

I'll have to get one of these next paycheck, it looks pretty handy. I was considering using my jig saw with a metal cutting blade, but I don't feel super confident in that route...
For now I just marked out what I want to cut later, and bent back the mangled metal to get access to the port.

I wound up finding a usb to ps2 adapter in a box of old add in cards, and it seems to work!
I was honestly surprised, I didn't know it would recognize the mouse, being that it's a fairly new-ish optical mouse, but hey, if it works it works. Now I can play a few rounds of FreeCell without feeling like my hand is gonna fall off at the wrist.

I might eventually try and get that usb add on card working, but it seems like the consensus is that windows 98 usb support is dodgy at best.
It looks like it's a NEC chipset, but the actual PCB and soldering are pretty poor. There's not a lot of components so I might try poking around with reseating/re-soldering stuff, but I honestly don't know if it's worth it or if it's a lost cause (as in I don't know if any of the components are toast).

I do eventually wanna see if I can set up some sort of LAN between my win98 and win10 pc's. I don't really know anything about networking ( I think i'll probably have to get a network switch or another ethernet card for my win10 pc), but that's all for another time.

For now I think my setup is in pretty good condition: I have a working windows 98 pc with 64mb of ram, a decent sound card, a decent 2d video card, and a basic zip file manager application. The optical drive works fine (aside from wanting to immediately close when you open it), I'm waiting on a 3d card I ordered on ebay, and it's reading 3.5in floppies just fine.

Eventually I wanna test the 5.25in floppy drive, get the new 3d video card installed, get a LAN set up, maybe upgrade the disk drive? (it's a 52x, so I think it's fast enough for now), and play around with a bunch of goofy peripherals and games I have lying around.

What I have now is good enough to see what I can do about trying to archive some of my grandpa's stuff (pictures from his time in the navy, family pictures, journals, ect.), as well as any legacy software he had, and that's the main thing I set out to do.

I wouldn't be able to do all this without the help of the people on this forum, especially you Chuck! Thank you so much.
 
andy said:
Most USB mice will work when plugged into a PS/2 port using a simple passive adapter. I have heard that some more recent mice have dropped this feature, but I don't know when the cutoff is.
Click to expand...

I don't either, but apparently my mouse made it in before the cut off! Thank you for the tip, I found that exact adapter and it worked first try.
 
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