Re: Strange behavior of USB PCIe add-in cards

On 2022-08-12 22:34, Harris Snyder wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I have two USB3 PCIe cards (different chipset vendors) that are both
> exhibiting the same symptoms:
> - They are detected and attached to the xhci driver.
> - They sort of work (a usb stick seems to work for file IO)
> - When an interactive device (e.g. USB sound card, mouse, or keyboard)
> is connected, they seem to drop the overwhelming majority of input
> events. For example, the mouse moves jerkily, at intervals of several
> seconds. Most keypresses on a keyboard are missed, and occasionally a
> "key up" event seems to be missed and the same key is typed
> repeatedly. A USB sound card has stutters and hitches in the audio
> output.
> 
> Does anybody recognize this behaviour or know of a solution? I have 
> tried:
> - A different PCIe slot
> - Two different PCIe USB3 cards from different vendors (and different
> chipset vendors - VIA and ASMedia). One of the cards uses the VIA
> VL806, which some users on the FreeBSD forum have reported working...
> 
> I'm using CURRENT, but about 2 weeks behind...
> 
> Thanks,
> Harris

Hi,

Early USB 3 controllers were quite unstable and unreliable so unless 
you're on very old hardware I'd suggest that you look for a decent USB 
hub instead if you need more ports. In my experience VIA (Labs) VL817 
works very well in general, one device that uses it is ORICO MH4U-U3 or 
at least used to. You might want to go for the newer VL822 controller 
however finding out what chipset is used can be a bit hard but according 
to the product images this one uses it for example 
https://www.amazon.com/HOYOKI-Powered-Adapter-Slippter-Keyboard/dp/B098D7H5XD 
. I've also used one hub based on ASMedia ASM1074 which worked fine for 
my use case but the quality of the product was very questionable, this 
controller doesn't seem to be very common and if you find one it's 
usually a very poorly made product overall. There are other vendors too 
such as Cypress, Fresco Logic, Genesys Logic etc but when I looked 
they're either very rare (Cypress and Fresco Logic) or people have very 
mixed experiences (Genesys Logic) however their newer ones might be 
better such as GL3590.

But if you want to give the USB PCIe cards a go the VIA one your 
mentioned is very old so I would highly suggest that you try to update 
the firmware. Unforunately that usually requires you to search various 
forums etc to find the flashing utility and firmware. Having a quick 
look this page ( https://github.com/jpmorrison/VL805 ) seems to be 
relevent and the other ones it links too. Do keep in mind that you may 
brick your card if you flash using wrong firmware or if it process hangs 
for whatever reason. This is also true for your ASMedia card, some 
controllers even include "easter eggs". See 
https://github.com/smx-smx/ASMTool , 
https://github.com/cyrozap/asmedia-xhc-re for more information. In some 
BIOSes you have a toggle for "PCI Timer Latency" option, usually you 
want to keep this at 32 or 64 which usually is the default may also be a 
cause.

Regarding your peripherals, are they known to be working and/or have 
your tried using the motherboard chipset controller instead? There are 
also reports of stuttering using Ryzen systems which may be what you're 
using (search the mailing lists for more information).

Providing what hardware (mainboard, cpu) are you using and arch (i386, 
amd64) would also be helpful in trying to debug your issue.

Best regards,
Daniel