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EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,889
12,857
I had a D-Link DUB-1310 in my cupboard, which is literally a decade old USB 3.0 PCIe card. It is a NEC Renesas 0720200 based card, without native drivers in macOS.

I installed it in my MacPro2,1 with El Capitan and it is seen, but without a driver. However, there is driver over at GitHub here which works from 10.9 to 10.15.

Unfortunately, the driver is packaged for clover, but since I'm on a Mac Pro, I have no desire to install clover. So, I used Pacifist to extract the mXHCD.kext inside, and then manually installed it in /Library/Extensions using the Terminal, with help from this page:


MacPro-USB3.png


Works fine. It's not exactly fast, but these speeds are roughly what I get in Windows as well (using the generic Microsoft Windows 10 driver). Tested was a Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB, through an old iCan USB 3 SATA dock. Maybe I'll try a different dock later to see if it makes any difference.

MacPro-USB3-BlackMagic.png


It also works with flash drives. Power is derived from a 4-pin molex connector, which I've attached to hard drive bay 4 using a modified adapter to get power from the SATA connector. Basically it's a SATA power to molex connector, but with one part of the SATA connector cut off (right side tab in pic) in order to allow it to fit the SATA drive connector on the Mac Pro.

15-pin-sata-male-to-4-pin-molex-female-ide-power-hard-drive-connector-cable-20cm.jpg


IMG_0334.jpg


IMG_0336.jpg


The Mac Pro sleeps fine, but I guess it cuts off power to PCIe when it sleeps, so when it wakes up, the attached drives are disconnected. Oh well, I'm just happy I can get faster than USB 2 speeds with a card I already just happened to have in my cupboard.
 

trifero

macrumors 68030
May 21, 2009
2,952
2,796
I had a D-Link DUB-1310 in my cupboard, which is literally a decade old USB 3.0 PCIe card. It is a NEC Renesas 0720200 based card, without native drivers in macOS.

I installed it in my MacPro2,1 with El Capitan and it is seen, but without a driver. However, there is driver over at GitHub here which works from 10.9 to 10.15.

Unfortunately, the driver is packaged for clover, but since I'm on a Mac Pro, I have no desire to install clover. So, I used Pacifist to extract the mXHCD.kext inside, and then manually installed it in /Library/Extensions using the Terminal, with help from this page:


View attachment 945434

Works fine. It's not exactly fast, but these speeds are roughly what I get in Windows as well (using the generic Microsoft Windows 10 driver). Tested was a Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB, through an old iCan USB 3 SATA dock. Maybe I'll try a different dock later to see if it makes any difference.

View attachment 945435

It also works with flash drives. Power is derived from a 4-pin molex connector, which I've attached to hard drive bay 4 using a modified adapter to get power from the SATA connector. Basically it's a SATA power to molex connector, but with one part of the SATA connector cut off (right side tab in pic) in order to allow it to fit the SATA drive connector on the Mac Pro.

View attachment 945454

View attachment 945453

View attachment 945452

The Mac Pro sleeps fine, but I guess it cuts off power to PCIe when it sleeps, so when it wakes up, the attached drives are disconnected. Oh well, I'm just happy I can get faster than USB 2 speeds with a card I already just happened to have in my cupboard.
Nice!
 

EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,889
12,857
I had a D-Link DUB-1310 in my cupboard, which is literally a decade old USB 3.0 PCIe card. It is a NEC Renesas 0720200 based card, without native drivers in macOS.

I installed it in my MacPro2,1 with El Capitan and it is seen, but without a driver. However, there is driver over at GitHub here which works from 10.9 to 10.15.

Unfortunately, the driver is packaged for clover, but since I'm on a Mac Pro, I have no desire to install clover. So, I used Pacifist to extract the mXHCD.kext inside, and then manually installed it in /Library/Extensions using the Terminal, with help from this page:


Works fine. It's not exactly fast, but these speeds are roughly what I get in Windows as well (using the generic Microsoft Windows 10 driver). Tested was a Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB, through an old iCan USB 3 SATA dock. Maybe I'll try a different dock later to see if it makes any difference.

View attachment 945435

It also works with flash drives. Power is derived from a 4-pin molex connector, which I've attached to hard drive bay 4 using a modified adapter to get power from the SATA connector. Basically it's a SATA power to molex connector, but with one part of the SATA connector cut off (right side tab in pic) in order to allow it to fit the SATA drive connector on the Mac Pro.
I get somewhat better speeds with my 1 TB Samsung T5, which is a bus powered SSD. Up to 145 MB/s read.

DiskSpeedTest-SamsungT5.png


I copied the 6.22 GB (6221606 KB) El Capitan install dmg over to the Samsung 850 EVO, and that took 6 minutes and 22.5 seconds, so that works out to 16.3 MB/s, or 130 Mbps. I guess that's the limit of my 802.11n WiFi.

I plugged in the Samsung T5 to the second USB 3 port and transferred the fine from the 850 EVO to the T5. That took 1 minute and 18 seconds, so that works out to 80 MB/s or 638 Mbps. I suspect that means the bandwidth is shared between the two ports.

The card is in PCIe slot 4 on my MacPro2,1, which I had thought could handle up to PCIe 4X. However, System Information states the card is being detected as a 1X card, so I believe this is a limitation of the card. I also doubt this supports UASP.

However, about 3/4 through the transfer between the two drives it started to affect Magic Mouse, and I momentarily even lost the connection, so obviously it causes some Bluetooth interference.

It can also charge my iPhone 7 Plus. I then tried my higher draw iPad Pro 10.5", and the iPad said it was charging too, although I'm not sure how much current it was getting.

I tried plugging in an old USB 3 hub, but less than a minute later the machine kernel panicked. However, in this case I blame the hub, since it's an el cheapo one and one that my 2017 iMac Core i5 can't even detect, so there's clearly something weird going on with that particular hub. It's now in my electronic waste pile waiting to be discarded safely.

tl;dr:

The D-Link DUB-1310 2-port USB 3 card doesn't have native Mac drivers, but the third party kext works with manual install.
Requires additional power through 4-pin molex.
Can charge iDevices.
Works with flash drives and bus powered SSDs.
Limited to about 145 MB/s with my Samsung T5.
Limited to about 80 MB/s transferring from one port to the other.
Can cause some Bluetooth interference.
Mac Pro sleeps fine, but any attached drives are ejected at wake.

So, overall, this is a decent solution for free (since I already had it in my cupboard), but if I was looking for more performance I'm thinking I would still want to consider something like an Inateck KT4004 or KT4006 which is not limited to PCIe 1X speeds with no UASP support. It would also be good if the attached drives didn't get ejected, although I see that is hit and miss with the KT4004.

If I do decide to go this route later with the KT4006/KT4006, to uninstall the kext do I just delete the kext from /Library/Extensions as the tonymac guide suggests? The reason I ask is because other guides suggest using the kextunload command and a bunch of other terminal commands.
 
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joevt

macrumors 604
Jun 21, 2012
6,963
4,257
The card is in PCIe slot 4 on my MacPro2,1, which I had thought could handle up to PCIe 4X. However, System Information states the card is being detected as a 1X card, so I believe this is a limitation of the card.
The picture of the card shows that it has only one lane. Your MacPro2,1 only has PCIe 1.0, so your 5 Gbps USB card is limited to only 2 Gbps (250 MB/s which is more like ~200 MB/s of actual data).

I plugged in the Samsung T5 to the second USB 3 port and transferred the fine from the 850 EVO to the T5. That took 1 minute and 18 seconds, so that works out to 80 MB/s or 638 Mbps. I suspect that means the bandwidth is shared between the two ports.
Write speed of a single drive is only 100 MB/s. Therefore I expect reading from one drive and writing to another would be slower than that. So 80 MB/s seems reasonable.
 
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EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,889
12,857
The picture of the card shows that it has only one lane. Your MacPro2,1 only has PCIe 1.0, so your 5 Gbps USB card is limited to only 2 Gbps (250 MB/s which is more like ~200 MB/s of actual data).

Write speed of a single drive is only 100 MB/s. Therefore I expect reading from one drive and writing to another would be slower than that. So 80 MB/s seems reasonable.
Ah yes, and as is obvious from my senseless post :oops: I totally forgot about all that, so thanks for pointing that out.

That means that even if I got the KT4006 or KT4004, I'd still be limited to roughly 200 MB/s max, or 100 MB/s per port or lower when transferring from one port to another, since they are both also single-lane cards.

I guess the only potential advantage of KT4006 & KT4004 would be that they might not eject the drives on sleep, but that seems to be hit and miss, according to Amazon reviews. I'll stick with the old D-Link then for now. There is another person who is in the midst of upgrading his MacPro1,1 to El Capitan to make use of the KT4004. I'll see how it goes for him.

 

MarkC426

macrumors 68040
May 14, 2008
3,693
2,096
UK
Sorry but I don’t want to read 109 pages of posts, but is the BT issue still present with USB 3.0 cards?
 

jscipione

macrumors 6502
Mar 27, 2017
429
243
I guess the only potential advantage of KT4006 & KT4004 would be that they might not eject the drives on sleep, but that seems to be hit and miss, according to Amazon reviews. I'll stick with the old D-Link then for now.

KT4004 and KT4006 have the same drive disconnect problem. It’s a problem for basically every USB3 card on a classic Mac Pro.

I only use BT mouse.How about a USB 2.0 card, I only want more ports.

You may upgrade the Bluetooth to one that supports Bluetooth 4.0 or better like the Apple/Broadcom BCM94360CD, then install open core to fix the Bluetooth range and USB3 interference problems.
 
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kohlson

macrumors 68020
Apr 23, 2010
2,425
737
Dunno. Not something I have ever looked into - I have 4 USB 2 ports free. And this is thread focused on USB 3.
 

kohlson

macrumors 68020
Apr 23, 2010
2,425
737
KT4004 would be that they might not eject the drives on sleep, but that seems to be hit and miss,
With a KT4004 in my cMP, it's a rock-solid miss. Disconnect on sleep every single time. While I get the notification, it reconnects automatically. If I'm concerned, like on a large file transfer, I set the Amphetamine timer.
 
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EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,889
12,857
KT4004 and KT4006 have the same drive disconnect problem. It’s a problem for basically every USB3 card on a classic Mac Pro.
With a KT4004 in my cMP, it's a rock-solid miss. Disconnect on sleep every single time. While I get the notification, it reconnects automatically. If I'm concerned, like on a large file transfer, I set the Amphetamine timer.
OK, noted. I'll save my cash and stick with my D-Link DUB-1310 then.

However, I also note that the KT4004 review in this thread here by @crjackson2134 states that s/he does not have the disconnect on sleep issue. Just lucky I guess. (The original post was back in 2014, but it was last updated in 2018.)

However, it also does reconnect automagically for me too after a few seconds, so that's good.

And thanks for the tip on amphetamine. I had always thought it'd be nice to have a sleep delay timer built into OS X, but didn't know such an app already existed from a third party.
 

kohlson

macrumors 68020
Apr 23, 2010
2,425
737
And thanks for the tip on amphetamine.
Usedit for years - very useful, especially with a power-hungry cMP and sleep-prone MBPs.

IIRC (and I've been known not to ...) one of the cMP luminaries said that the support chips in the cMP don't support power to the PCIe bus during sleep. I'm sketchy on the details...

But other than the very minor annoyances with a notification (often several) things work fine.I've had an 8TB Seagate connected to my KT4004 for ad-hoc backups for over a year - no issues. I also use it with an SD card reader, as some video shoot files are 60GB and greater. For these purposes, it works fine for me.
 
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joevt

macrumors 604
Jun 21, 2012
6,963
4,257
There's some missing info in the first post.

Can anyone with a Sonnet Allegro USB-C 4-Port PCIe (USB3C-4PM-E) that has two ASM3142 controllers tell me if the PCIe switch is PCIe 3.0 or PCIe 2.0? Show screenshots of PCI section of System Information.app and output from ioreg -w0 -rtk IOPCIExpressLinkStatus > ioreg_rtlinkstatus.txt or output from pcitree.sh.

The tech specs say the card is PCIe 2.0 x4 which means it uses a PCIe 2.0 switch which means the controllers are limited to PCIe 2.0 x2 instead of PCIe 3.0 x2 which means they can do only ~750 MB/s instead of ~980 MB/s.
 

BigSteel

macrumors newbie
Dec 13, 2019
9
5
I've got a USB 3.0 card that's acting up, and has been ever since I bought my 5,1 (4,1 flashed used) last year.

It appears to be a 'TXIC'-branded card, although using the VIA VL806-Q6 chipset. I have all the usual problems that people have - drives ejected on sleep, etc. - but the card seems to put itself into 2.0 (or slower??) mode quite often.

Whether it's an external RAID HDD, an SSD, a card reader, etc., when it works it works, but after wake-from-sleep, the attached drives will be slooowwwwwww. I'll have to eject it (which in itself can take minutes and often results in a forced eject), reattach it, and then usually I'm back in business. But having to do that almost every time I use an external drive is a PITA, as I don't like pulling out the Mac to see the back every time.

I'm running Mojave 10.14.6.

**I just did a quick test, attaching a card reader, then copying a few SD and CF cards. Worked fine. Put to sleep, started again, and no go. Restarted with the reader and SD card still inserted, and it worked again. Maybe it is as simple as not putting to sleep and turning off every time...
 

Slash-2CPU

macrumors 6502
Dec 14, 2016
404
268
There's some missing info in the first post.

Can anyone with a Sonnet Allegro USB-C 4-Port PCIe (USB3C-4PM-E) that has two ASM3142 controllers tell me if the PCIe switch is PCIe 3.0 or PCIe 2.0? Show screenshots of PCI section of System Information.app and output from ioreg -w0 -rtk IOPCIExpressLinkStatus > ioreg_rtlinkstatus.txt or output from pcitree.sh.

The tech specs say the card is PCIe 2.0 x4 which means it uses a PCIe 2.0 switch which means the controllers are limited to PCIe 2.0 x2 instead of PCIe 3.0 x2 which means they can do only ~750 MB/s instead of ~980 MB/s.

It won’t matter either way. PCIe 2.0 x2 is 1000MB/s theoretical and 733-790MB/s real world. PCIe 3.0 x1 is 985MB/s theoretical and 740-800MB/s real world.
 

joevt

macrumors 604
Jun 21, 2012
6,963
4,257
It won’t matter either way. PCIe 2.0 x2 is 1000MB/s theoretical and 733-790MB/s real world. PCIe 3.0 x1 is 985MB/s theoretical and 740-800MB/s real world.
If the Sonnet uses a PCIe 3.0 switch then the upstream can be PCIe 2.0 x4 to the MacPro5,1 and the downstream ports can be PCIe 3.0x2 to the ASM3142 so the USB can get full 10 Gbps performance instead of the crap 8 Gbps of PCIe 2.0 x2 controllers like the ASM1142.
 

Slash-2CPU

macrumors 6502
Dec 14, 2016
404
268
Are you saying that's the PCIe switch used by the Sonnet Allegro USB-C 4-Port PCIe (USB3C-4PM-E) that has two ASM3142 controllers?
Please provide a photo or output from pcitree.sh, ioreg, lspci, system_profiler, or System Information.app.

Why? The photo of the chip is on Sonnet’s website on the card. Order one and prove me wrong. All you have to do is zoom in. The part number is on it. It’s definitely a photo, not a rendering. There’s visible dust specks on the card.

Other tell that it’s not a PCIe 3.0 switch is there’s no heatsink on it. A 3-port, 8-lane(2/2/4) 3.0 switch will be a 3-6 watt part and will need a heatsink.

Here: I cleaned up the image to make it really easy. There’s no other part from that manufacturer that matches those alphanumerics.
801334D4-64D0-4248-A4C6-201863929135.jpeg
F392BA57-139A-4B1B-B362-702E38CB8DE9.jpeg
 
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EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,889
12,857
I get somewhat better speeds with my 1 TB Samsung T5, which is a bus powered SSD. Up to 145 MB/s read.

View attachment 945525

tl;dr:

The D-Link DUB-1310 2-port USB 3 card doesn't have native Mac drivers, but the third party kext works with manual install.
Requires additional power through 4-pin molex.
Can charge iDevices.
Works with flash drives and bus powered SSDs.
Limited to about 145 MB/s with my Samsung T5.
Limited to about 80 MB/s transferring from one port to the other.
Can cause some Bluetooth interference.
Mac Pro sleeps fine, but any attached drives are ejected at wake.
The picture of the card shows that it has only one lane. Your MacPro2,1 only has PCIe 1.0, so your 5 Gbps USB card is limited to only 2 Gbps (250 MB/s which is more like ~200 MB/s of actual data).
I bought a Inateck KT4006, which is the same as the KT4004 except just 2-port and comes with both a regular size and low profile bracket (the latter good for my Windows machine). It also has a connector on it that allows for 2 internal ports.

KT4006-SamsungT5.png


I get MUCH faster speeds with the same Samsung T5 drive with the KT4006.
145.4 MB/s read with DUB-1310 vs 189.0 MB/s read with KT4006. +30%
104.1 MB/s write with DUB-1310 vs 161.5 MB/s write with KT4006. +55%

My D-Link DUB-1310 with that third-party kext does not support MSI:

Screen Shot 2020-08-31 at 5.47.25 PM.png


However, the KT4006 supports MSI:

MacPro-USB3-KT4006.png


Because I don't understand how MSI works, I don't know if it is a reason why the KT4006 is so much faster, but nonetheless I'm glad I tried the KT4006.

BTW, as expected, I still get the USB 3 drive getting kicked off at sleep, but the good news is that the re-mount of the drive is much faster with the KT4006. Basically instantaneous now.
 
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