USB2.0 in Win98

[feetball]

Hello ... I am running BurninTest on Win98 to test one of our products. I have ordered 20-USB2.0 wrapback plugs to build up new teststations. Only problem is I just found out the USB2.0 version is not supported in Win98 (dang microsoft).

Is there ANY way to get these working in Win98 as USB1 devices?

Thanks!!!

[David (PassMark)]

Microsoft decided not to support USB2 for Windows 95, 98, ME & NT.

They only support USB2 for Windows 2000 and XP.

This is presumably to give you a reason to buy the upgrade to XP.

Becuase of this PassMark haven't tested the USB2 plugs with Windows98.

However we have tested the USB1 plugs with Windows 98.

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David
PassMark

[Anonymous]

I have read about several people that have used or are using USB 2.0 under Windows 98SE. Why can't you support it?

I just purchased the USB 2.0 tester from you and it isn't recognized at all by BurnIn Pro 4.0 under Windows 98SE.

Why should we have to purchase two different units to check the USB ports using different OS's?

[David (PassMark)]

Writing device drivers is a very difficult and complex task. We spent 3 months alone just working on power mangement in Windows XP. (So that the USB 2 plug sleeps and hibernates correctly).

Support Windows 98 and XP is a lot of additional work becuase internally they are very different operating systems. In W98 the situation is made even more complex becuase Microsoft doesn't support USB2 and testing against multiple 3rd party drivers would be required. It seemed unlikely to us we could produce drivers that worked on all W98 machines in these circumstances.

Before we released the plug to the market we checked to see how many people are stull using Windows 98 to determine if it was worth the effort. It turned out that only about 6% of people are using Windows 98 and this is dropping all the time. Just for comparision Windows 95 is now only 0.3% of the market.

Of the people still using Windows 98 we figured that a lot of them would be using older hardware that matched their older O/S. So most of the 6% wouldn't have USB2 hardware anyway.

On top of that we already had a solution for Winodows 98 and older USB1 hardware with our USB1 plug. See,
http://www.passmark.com/products/usbplugdiff.htm

So in short, the answer is, that it was too much work, for too few people when we already had another product that covered those people.

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David
PassMark

[Anonymous]

But my point is that we have to purchase both USB loopback plugs to test different OS's. Isn't there some way we can use the USB 1.1 feature of the USB 2 loopback plug on Windows 98SE?

[David (PassMark)]

Our USB1 plugs work on both Windows 98 and Windows XP. (But only at USB1 speeds and without some of the additional functions we have put in the USB2 plug, like the bechmark test). So you could use the USB1 plug for basic testing on both O/S.

We have no plans to do the work required to get USB2 working correctly with Windows 98.

In another 12 months are thinking that W98 will be dead and burried. Right next to the graves of DOS3.3, Win3.1, Win NT, and Windows 95.

I know this is not the answer you wanted. But this is the reality of the computer industry. There are too many platforms to support all computers and all users for all products. We have to target our development to the biggest user groups.

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David
PassMark