USB PCIe card driver difficulty

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Level 1

4 points

USB PCIe card driver difficulty

I have a Mac Pro (model 5,1) running OSX 10.6.8 with an Inateck (KT4004) 4 Port USB PCIe card that is not working.

In the system profiler, it is listed but shows no driver installed. So, I contacted Mac Sales (OWC) who it was purchased from. They couldn’t help but suggested contacting Inateck, who also could not help but suggested it should be plug and play and to maybe look for a generic driver on the internet somewhere.

I was able to find a driver (RehabMan’s GenericUSBXHCI.kext v1.2.5) but the website I sourced it from reads as if it is not compatible with my OS. Furthermore, even if it is compatible I don’t know where to drop the file in order for the OS to find it!

Is there someone out there in the ether that can point me in the right direction? I am an audio engineer and transferring 100gb recordings onto this computer at USB2.0 speeds is very painful.

If it is relevant, I also have two of the OEM Radeon HD 5770 video cards installed (in Slot 1 and Slot 2). Both working well, fwiw.

Posted on Feb 25, 2025 10:14 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Servant of Cats

Level 7

33,983 points

Feb 25, 2025 1:37 PM in response to SoundButler

There's an online manual for that card, but it refers to a Windows driver, and has the ominous note "Note: USB 3.0 drivers are not supported on Mac or Linux OS."

Inateck – Product Support Page – 4-Port USB 3.0 PCIe Express Card for Mac Pro KT4004

The title of the Support page says "for Mac" but the manual claims that the System Requirements are "Windows XP/Vista/8 (32/64 bit)."

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Answer 2

SoundButler Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 26, 2025 5:20 PM in response to Servant of Cats

I did find and read the same info on their website. I am just wondering based on that, why is it not working. If it is plug and play, why does it not play when I plug? My hope was that because of the version of OS I am running, that it kind of falls outside of a normal use case and would therefore necessitate an abnormal solution to get working. This card did work in this very computer previously while it was running a much more modern OS (Mojave perhaps, can’t remember) however my audio workstation software requires 10.6.8 and while I would like for the card to work, the whole purpose of this computer is as an audio workstation so 10.6.8 is it.

It may just be that this card was designed and built after 10.6.8 and as such, was not designed to work with it, but I’d like to try whatever I can to get it working.

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Answer 3

Rudegar

Level 10

180,072 points

Feb 27, 2025 12:35 AM in response to SoundButler

plug and play is a somewhat empty term

some usb devices requires a device driver which the manufacturer needs to make for operating systems

some usb devices like usb sticks, sdcard reader and optical drives and external harddrives rely on generic device drivers as in one size fit all these are things like HID and mass storage and so forth.

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USB PCIe card driver difficulty

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