USB 3 PCIe card Mac compatability

Does your product PCIE-USB3-SP work on mac pro machines?

Specifically I have a MacPro3,1 Quad-Core Intel Xeon with several PCIe slots open.

Hi Chistoph,

No, sorry, there is no USB 3.0 stack for Mac from Renesas or Apple.

Until Apple releases their own USB 3.0 stack and drivers, you’ll have to rely on 3rd party efforts on particular cards, like LaCie’s: http://www.lacie.com/more/index.htm?i…

In terms of other operating systems:

Renesas’ stack and drivers (included with our card) supports all versions of Windows XP+, and Microsoft’s stack in Windows 8 is supports Renesas and our card out of the box (no driver install needed).

On Linux, all recent kernels have support for USB 3.0 included in kernel, including the Renesas host controller and our card. Particularly in Linux 3.0+ the support is stable.

Hope that helps. Sorry for the bad news,
Bernie

I have to agree with a post on Amazon in their comments section for one of your products. Plugable Technologies customer support is second to none.

Last night I read through many different Plugable Technologies product reviews and I was pleasantly surprised how well people spoke of you even tho their products had defects of one kind or another. Problems happen to any manufacturer. The key is how does the company respond to problems. Plugable Technologies time again shined with pristine excellence.

I am utterly floored that I got a reply on a Saturday within 12 hours of my original question. You provided a clear cut answer, supplementary reasons backing up the answer and then a solution to my original question that was on par with Miracle on 34th Steet, where Santa informs Macey’s customers to buy items at gGimbles because he knows what they really want can not be found at Macey’s.

I have reviewed your companies product line and have a good idea of what you guys make. I will wholeheartedly recommend your products to my clients.

If your company ever needs Web support or work, my company AbacusWeb.com would be honored to serve. Like yourself I feel customer service must come before anything else.

Thanks so much for the kind words, Christoph!

We deeply appreciate it!

Bernie

I have a Plugable USB 3.0 HDD docking station.
I’ve been trying (sporadically) to get it to work on my Mac Pro for a long time. No joy.

First I bought a Lacie USB3 card, but the Lacie driver is not willing to talk to disks that are not Lacie.

Then I bought a Cal Digit USB3 card, but its driver cannot find the Plugable device on the USB bus. (The USB Super-Speed Bus shows up in System Information, but nothing I connect to it shows up).

I see no point in trying a Plugable USB3 card because your FAQ says there is no native Plugable driver for Mac, and the Lacie driver that you mention does not even work with the Lacie card.

Any more suggestions as to what I might try?

Hi Brian,

Happy new year - thanks for your patience.

Unfortunately, until Apple releases their own USB 3.0 stack, the options probably won’t be great here.

As you say, cards from Lacie and the Cal Digit which come with 3rd party Mac USB 3.0 drivers, list a lot of limitations. Often only working with their own brand devices. They’re not complete stacks as you might expect.

It’s for that reason, that we’ve decided to wait for Apple’s own stack for our USB 3.0 host controller products, where (hopefully) it will be a complete and well tested set of drivers. So our desktop card http://plugable.com/products/pcie-usb… and laptop expresscard http://plugable.com/products/ecard-usb3/ have no Mac support at all today.

Unfortunately, while waiting for the Apple USB 3 stack, the only option we can recommend on Mac is running USB 3.0 devices in USB 2.0 mode (just connect to any USB 2.0 port, devices will fall back). Obviously you won’t be getting any USB 3.0 performance benefits, though.

Sorry we don’t have better news around USB 3.0 for Mac. But hope that background helps.

Best wishes,
Bernie