What's up with the K8W USB 1.1 port?

Anyone knows why would Tyan downgrade the S2885 K8W motherboard and use an
antique version 1.1 USB port insted of the faster USB 2.0 port? Every USB
peripheral you buy today on the market is 2.0 compliant. Did Tyan have a
overstock of 1.1 chips needed to be used up? Wassup?

 

The S288x boards use an AMD chipset that only supports USB 1.1.
For a while that was the only Opteron chipset on the market.

I simply added a PCI card with a couple of USB 2.0 ports and an
IEEE1394b port to every S2885 system I built.

 

Thanks, I had no idea that this was the case. The K8W only has one 32 bit
PCI slot (occupied), and 4 PCI-X 64 bit slots open. Can I get such a card in
a PCI-X version? Thanks again for the information.

 

I doubt anyone would bother making such a card, but I have had no
problems with ordinary PCI cards in a couple of the PCI-X slots.

There is a jumper on the motherboard that lets you put two of the
PCI-X slots into "PCI Compatibility Mode". I think it is J39 but
you really should check your own manual rather than trusting my
memory - it has been about 4 months since I've dealt with an
S2885. After closing that jumper, slots 3 and 4 can be used by
32 bit/33 MHz/5 Volt PCI cards.

 

You're right, jumper 39 is the one. I found a PCI-X card for this purpose
and it's twice as expensive than a standard PCI card:


http://www.provantage.com/buy-7sifw...-pci-host-adapter-siig-nn-8us212-shopping.htm