Hello all, I'm obviously new, and I'm trying to fix a problem with my new (old) mac. Some context: I recently bought a powermac g3 266 (the beige beast some on youtube have called it). I bought it primarily for the purpose of using it as an intermediary to get software onto an old Macintosh SE I own using its floppy drive (my SE does not have a superdrive, so It can't read 1.4 megs. Meaning Omiflop and the like no worky. It's been a whole thing).
The particular Powermac I obtained had a USB card in it, which immediately regocnized my apple pro keyboard and optical mouse. They worked fine, however the previous owner had a really janky setup for the partitions on the HDD and had files cluttered everywhere. I decided to do a clean install and reinitialized the HDD and installed 9.2. Since the install the USB card does not work, meaning my keyboard and mouse do not work (I had to barrow my SE's ADB keyboard and mouse to continue using it) and the system information screen now just lists that slot as having a "pci card" with no specific info. It still sees the firewire card installed next to it, but no longer sees the USB card.
I am guessing I deleted the card's driver or extension or something with the format. Does anyone here know if it could be something else? Or, if it is a driver issue, where I might find USB card drivers for a powermac g3? If it helps, the card says it's an adaptec AUA-3020. That name sounds extremely generic to me. I'm pretty new to collecting for macs - I was raised on PC - so I'm not entirely sure how their driver or extension system even works. Is there a generic USB card driver I can get or do I need to actually track down this card's driver?
I know this post is kinda a mess, my knowledge of macs is, sadly, such that I'm not even entirely sure what questions to ask. If anyone needs clarification please ask away.
The vendor's page for the card (https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/support/_eol/combo/aua-3020/) says it works with drivers built in to OS 9 or X. But your description does sound like a missing driver.
Maybe you need a system enabler for your model of Power Mac?
Thank you for the replies! I more or less found a fix, and thought I'd update with it in case anyone else down the line has a similar problem.
SO, as was pointed out, the USB card is supposed to run on generic apple USB drivers that are native to 9 and X. Digging around the internet, however, I discovered that OS 9.2.2 - the version I installed - is known to have an issue with their USB driver, where it doesn't like USB ports that aren't hardwired to the motherboard. So USB cards and converters and the like often don't play well with 9.2.2. This was from an FAQ from the company that made my card. It suggested rolling the drivers back to 1.4.6 and then pointed to dead links from the early 2000s.
I was, however, able to find the drivers in an archive on macintoshgarden. I removed the newer drivers from the extensions folder (saved them in case I needed them), dropped in the older drivers, rebooted, and now the keyboard and mouse work again. However, the device manager still lists a generic PCI card, rather than the proper info for it like it should. I'm not too worried about this, the maker's FAQ says some versions of the device finder mislable it, and the USB ports correctly identify the apple pro keyboard and optical mouse.
Some things I noticed during this that are helpful: Older macs don't like you hotswaping their USB ports. If it's not plugged in when turned on sometimes it won't read it. Also, because my USB is a seperate card that has to be driven by extension, when the mouse cursor first appears on the screen while the system boots up, the mouse doesn't work. It only starts working once the little USB extension icon appears on the bottom of the screen.
Nice work. Could you attach the driver you used to this thread? Use Media browser in the toolbar.
Well, I tried to include it in the post, but the media browser doesn't like the file type and wouldn't let me. I got it from here, however:
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macos-usb-and-firewire-support
It was the last download I used. The 1.4.6 sit file.