dave_farmer

There is a 3rd party software driver for Limited NT USB support
see http://www.bsquare.com/products/usbwin40/

calvin

Hi Dave,

here is my standard answer I post in response to somebody asking about NT 4.0
and USB:

Microsoft have not, nor will they ever, provide generic USB support in any form
for NT4. This is merely a COMMERCIAL decision, and provides yet another lever
to assist them into 'strongarming' everyone into a needless upgrade to W2k (OK
from my observation after several SPs and a heap of bug fixes/security patches,
but still gonna cost real $) or (God forbid!) XP. (The tellitubbies operating
system - Yuck !!)

A lot of USB devices from the more progressive and innovative manufacturers
provide driver support for USB under Win NT4. From all reports to date these
drivers work satisfactorily for the device concerned. They are certainly not a
'one size fits all' approach though.

The web site: http://www.usbman.com/Win%20NT%20USB%20Guide.htm summarises a lot
of this info.

Because a lot of these drivers expect to be 'the only kid on the block' it is
extremely likely that attempting to simultaneously use more than one device in
this manner on a system will lead to instability or a crash as the drivers fight
for ownership of resources.

Several commercial organisations were, or still are, developing USB stacks
allowing more generalised support of USB on NT 4.0.

The ones I am aware of are:

Jungo http://www.jungo.com/wdusb_nt.html
BSquare http://www.bsquare.com/products/usbwin40/default.asp
IONetworks http://www.ionetworks.com

The capabilites and costs of these products vary - you need to read closely to
discover if their product will do what you intend.

There is also an open source public domain project being developed by a person
in the PRC - his home page is: http://www.geocities.com/mypublic99/

I haven't had a chance to investigate this in detail yet.

I have personally seen the BSquare solution functioning to communicate with a
PDA cradle - worked flawlessly. I own and use an IONetworks WatchportV web
camera. The install could not have been a simpler, it installs new .sys drivers
to access the USB port, and does so using the correct method, which doesn't even
require a system reboot. (I wish other software writers would READ the rules -
it could save us poor end users an awful lot of needless reboots) The Watchport
camera works perfectly and provides the best image quality I have ever seen for
a 'consumer grade' web camera.

In conclusion, I wish people would stop making comments like 'USB is not
supported under NT4' - If you must comment please make it accurate, example:
'Microsoft have made the commercial decision not to provide NT4 USB support -
but some manufacturers provide support for specific USB devices on NT4.'

Calvin.