Does brand (VIA) matter when buying pci to usb 2.0 card

[Denvers Dawgs]

Does it matter who makes a USB2.0 card or do they all work fine.

I saw this one,

http://store.4linkcomm.com/viausb20pcic.html

I've never heard of the brand and was wondering if anyone knows about them?

[ozymango]

Well, I've got an el cheapo usb2.0 card (with the Via chipset) I bought way long time ago when I had a fast scanner (Epson) I needed to connect to my computer. I think I paid about ten bucks ... and it's lasted for a couple of years now with no hiccups whatsover. So I wouldn't worry, myself.

[Soopafresh]

Ten Bucks ? You couldn't find anything cheaper . Yeah, I've used that chipset as well and it worked fine.

[JSB]

damn, I can not think of it, but there is one brand that my friend at work could not get to work with his system. I believe that it is a know issue.


Maybe it was VIA: Linky

I will check back tomorrow.

JSB

[Denvers Dawgs]

ok so I have winxp, does that mean I should stay away from VIA?

[JSB]

No... I think it had to do with the motherboards chipset.....

OK I just called the guy...
It was a VIA FIRE WIRE card... sorry for the confusion. He said he issue was fixed with SP2.

Sorry again.

JSB

[rallynavvie]

FireWire chipsets matter a bit more than USB chipsets. FireWire cards are HBAs so they have a little bit more tasking than a USB which is just a controller. Similar to the difference between SCSI and IDE. Pretty much any old USB 2.0 card should work as well as another. I've been pushing those combo USB and FireWire cards that Adaptec has though, just frees up PCI slots and it's a good card.

What I'd really like is a PCI-X card with a GbE NIC, FireWire400/800, and USB 2.0. Even just one port for each, I can always get a hub. It's just that I've only got 4 PCI slots, 2 PCI-X on the same bus, and 1 of the 32-bit slots is covered by the video card. One 32-bit slot is for the audio card but I don't want to slow down my SCSI HBA in one of the PCI-X slots by putting a 32-bit PCI device in there

[ofbarea]

With some old 486, Pentium, K5, K6 and early PII mobos there were some compatibility problems due PCI version, pci bus power and pci bus timings.

With recent PC's this is no longer an issue. But in case of problems check this link: http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=5&ArticleID=71

Finally early NEC USB2 chipsets (huge chips) were slower that later chipsets from Nec and other brands. On the other hand at that time they also were the most universally compatible with older systems.

As a side note, anyone interested in adding a USB2 or firewire card to an old system, should try getting a card that supports dual pci bus power of 3.3V / 5V. Usually these cards will work in PCI 2.0 environments, but there is no guarantee. Most of the time cards advertised as Mac compatible have this feature. I had good results with Orangemicro cards.