Addonics has announced a Mac-compatible USB 2.0 host controller that adds five USB 2.0 ports through a PCI expansion slot. The USB 2.0 Host Controller has a list price of $59, and comes bundled with Mac OS X drivers.
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"Windows 98SE, Me and 2000, Mac OS X or greater"
No OS9 support, apparently. That's interesting to see... they know where the Mac's future lies :)
To the poster who said, "USB 2.0 480MB/sec ...gotta love it!" that's 480 megaBITS per second, not 480 megaBYTES as you posted.
still... gotta love it ... sure beats out 12 Mb/sec.
DAMMIT! Drop USB 2 and shove FireWire in for high bandwidth stuff. I don't even know of a single USB 2 product! We have tons of USB 2 hubs... but no products for it! Duh!
Anyone know if USB 2 will talk to a USB 1 device? I've got a USB CDRW, Digital Camera, Visor Prism, Rio MP3 Player, and of course the keyboard and mouse. I want to fix the issue by putting a card in the machine (G4) versus using a hub.
No, nobody knows that
Yes USB 2.0 is backward compatible w/ 1.0 but beware it works just like SCSI being that it will only run the fastest as the slowest device. Example. If you have all USB 2.0 devices and you put a USB 1 device the bandwidtch will drop to the 12Mb/sec speed. So you 2.0 devices will not get 400Mb/sec. I assume the ports are all independent so keep that in mind.
Someone should develop a USB2 - ATA/100 combo card. I don't want to waste a PCI slot on just USB2 or ATA/100.
"it will only run the fastest as the slowest device"
Sorry, that's not even close to correct. Yes, mixing 1.1 (no one uses 1.0) and 2.0 devices will reduce the bandwidth for the 2.0 devices, it will depend a lot of the specific devices and what polling rate they set. It's very unlikely that you'll drag the entire bus down to 1.1 speeds unless you have a 1.1 device which is hogging 100% of the 12Mbps channel capacity - in which case it needs that capacity.
The solution for this is easy - get a USB 2.0 hub (ask the guy who has all the 2.0 hubs and nothing to put on them to spot you a couple :). One of the spec requirements for USB 2.0 hubs is that they perform speed shifting - making your 1.1 device look like a 2.0 device.
As for there not being any USB 2.0 devices - it took years before there were any Firewire devices - and USB 2.0 has the advantage that it works with existing 1.1 devices. So, upgrade already. The more 2.0 compatible systems the faster new hardware will come out that takes advantage of 2.0.
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USB 2.0 480MB/sec ...gotta love it!