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Recent Macs Have Built-in USB 2.0

Posted by pudge on from the taking-your-word-for-it dept.

RalphBNumbers writes "According to a forum thread at CreateMac, a Korean Mac community, the newer MDD 1.25 and 1.42 GHz dual G4s actually use a NEC PD720101 USB 2.0 controller for their built-in USB. Apple's drivers only support USB 1.x, but you can apparently enable USB 2.0 functionality by using the drivers for a USB 2.0 card from Orange Micro that uses the same NEC controller. YMMV." Is there a translation of any of this, somewhere?

9 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. USB Secrecy by fm6 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A lot of manufacturers, including Apple, seem pretty pretty close-mouthed on the 1.1/2.0 issue. I don't recall ever seeing an ad for a complete system that specified which version of USB the system supports. I guess everbody has an inventory of motherboards with built-in USB 1.1 that they need to use up. Not that big a deal if you've got an extra PCI slot for a $20 USB 2.0 card. But what if you have an iMac or some other system with no "legacy" ports or slots?

  2. USB 2 Treat Firewire 800 by Hi+Larry! · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My guess is apple don't support usb 2 because it would kill firewire 800, a standard that doesn't seem to be adopted by many manufacturer yet.

  3. Re:About time... by myov · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the device fall back to USB 1 speeds in that case?

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    I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
  4. USB 2.0 controller and Macs by Tycho · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Those Macs do have a USB 2.0 controller, but it doesn't really matter. I read the technical documentation for the NEC uPD7020101, which is the controller used in those Macs. The USB 2.0 portion of the controller is trivial to disable and yet still leave the USB 1.1 portion functional. It is also possible to make the USB 2.0 portion permanently disabled in hardware or disabled in hardware, but possible to enable with a hardware hack. Or for that matter disabled, but possible to enable with a new system BIOS or a new driver. Any of these are possible. Anyone care to guess which one is the case? Knowing Apple any could be the case.

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    Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
  5. I'm getting a bit tired of this by hprotagonist0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My Powerbook's got a DVD-R drive that apparently could be a 2X writer and support DVD-RW, but Apple's drivers only support 1X writing and no RW whatsoever. Now this. Why does Apple deliberately cripple its hardware?

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    "A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire
    1. Re:I'm getting a bit tired of this by snuffdiddy23 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      the powermacs got an update to increase their speed performance to allow for the new higher speed media, and they may follow suit with that with the powerbooks as well.

      i would also say that you should not expect much of an optical drive in a laptop. i imagine that it would be pretty system intensive to burn a dvd at 2x on a powerbook and would get mighty hot anyway.

      apple really does not cripple their hardware so much as not allow for poor support of it. no dvd support at all until 10.1, so why expect them to have support that they feel is satisfactory on a relatively new concept? apple does a great deal of tech support and i think that they are best to not release anything unstable to save their already busy support people when it can all be avoided by quality products.

  6. Re:About time... by galaxy300 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Thinking back to a year ago, I wish I had bought a firewire ext. hard drive, but it seemed like the PC Cards for USB 2.0 were cheaper. I have a laptop and my options for expansion were fairly limited -- I think I liked the fact that I could just bring my hard drive to work and plug it in to my USB port and pull everything off of it. Now I have an iPod and I have all the firewire ports so a firewire drive would have made sense...

    All of my USB 2.0 devices have worked great, though and at a pretty decent speed -- no problems there.

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    seriouslyexcited.net
  7. Re:About time... by galaxy300 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't think that would work very well for burning DVDs, and moving large files around would be just painful. I actually like the USB 2.0 card I've put in my laptop -- I know moving to firewire would be nice, but I'm just not crazy about the upgrade expense...

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    seriouslyexcited.net
  8. Driver available by Halo1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    MacNN's got a story with a link to unofficial drivers that enable the USB 2.0 functionality. Some comments there indicate they really work, though I can't verify this myself (I have neither an MDD G4 nor any USB2 devices)

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