OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Hardware

USB 3

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ivan:
A question for those on the elite list of testers.

Does the USB 3 driver work at boot time?  I have a couple of KVM switches that work with my Linux boxes but will not work with any of the ArcaOS units with a USB 2 addin card although they will work as stand alone boxes.

A secondary question, can a usb mouse and keyboard work through one USB 3 port?  It works with a couple of my ITX boxes that have real USB 2 ports.

Andreas Schnellbacher:
I didn't have a chance to test this, as yet. Please ask Lewis directly and ask him for addition to the testers list, too. I myself could write my impression, but as a member, I was told not to do that.

The USB 3 ports come with two interfaces, as David explained on WS, one for USB 2 devices and one for USB 3 devices. So, yes, USB 2 (and 1.1) devices generally work at USB 3 ports.




Doug Bissett:

--- Quote ---Does the USB 3 driver work at boot time?
--- End quote ---

The USB drivers (all of them) don't work, until near the end of boot.

However, if the USB (any type) controller is operated by the BIOS (or whatever), they will work until the USB drivers are loaded, then, they won't work until USB has finished initializing (near the end of boot). There is nothing new about that, it is the way it has always been in OS/2.

Mouse, and keyboard work with the USB 3 drivers (even USB 1.0 devices work), after they finish initializing. There is a problem (with all OS/2 USB drivers), where you cannot respond to a "press enter" (or the like), before USB drivers finish initializing. Again, this is as it has always been. Whether that can be fixed, or not, remains to be seen. The answer is to use a PS/2 connected keyboard, but many new (and some not so new) machines seem to have forgotten to include a PS/2 connector (a PS/2 to USB adapter doesn't count, that is still USB). Something else for somebody to figure out.

Lars:
I can only say for my own USB driver set but this should also hold true for the AN USB drivers:
during the boot up phase (that is, while the screen is still in text mode), there is a point in time when the swap over between legacy USB (USB devices are emulated as PS/2 devices) and natively supported USB (meaning, the OS/2 host controller drivers have loaded and connected to USBD.SYS and the USB keyboard driver/HID driver has also connected to USBD.SYS) happens.

Anyone can test: during boot, hit Alt-F1 to get the selection screen, hit F2 to open a commandline (and not boot to the desktop).
When you now type something with your USB keyboard, there will be a point in time where you can no longer type until USB is finally initialized after which you can continue typing. At least this is what happens on my system.

The gap for the switchover is fairly short. Just 1 to 2 seconds which does not matter in practice.

All of this requires that your system supports legacy USB. I fear that many new Mobos no longer support this as they boot with UEFI which comes with its own USB drivers (basically, the replacement for the legacy USB solution).

ivan:
Thank you all for the information.

It would appear that successful recognition of USB 3 ports during boot is impossible without some radical reworking of the OS/2 boot procedure and, maybe, hacking of the os2krnl.

I will have to dig around in the motherboard hardware and bios firmware to see if I can get any more information (it will give me something to do during lockdown since at my age I'm not supposed to be outside). 

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