Trendy USB Controllers On Win98 (and Up)

[Yeo Kheng Meng] has an issue: he likes Windows 98, however he additionally likes his 2020 ThinkPad, which solely has an xHCI USB controller– you recognize, the sort wanted for USB 3.0, one thing that post-dates Windows 98 by a full decade. Drivers? Finding none existed, he determined to do it himself, or not less than information the method of utilizing  LLMs to produce drivers for Windows 98 and up.

Some of you simply stopped studying, however are you able to blame him for making a demonic pact for this venture? Driver growth isn’t actually a one-man present, particularly as a part-time pastime venture you’re unsure anybody else will ever use. If you do wish to use it, you’ll find the code on GitHub.

It does work, although, he admits it may be buggy. Unlike purely vibe-coded tasks, [Meng] intends to deal with bugs put forth within the repo, not less than. If you wish to know the way he did it, try the link to [Meng]’s weblog– which is human-authored, we are able to inform– and the movies embedded therein. He demonstrates it engaged on a 2020 ThinkPad, which must be usable even with Windows 11, and one other mannequin from 2016– neither of which have any old-style USB ports. Older laptops would possibly, whereas any desktop can simply use a PCI card with a USB2.0 controller– or you are able to do like [Meng] did previous to this venture, and use the PCI card via adapters. 

[Yeo Kheng Meng] evidently will get as a lot of a kick out of becoming a member of previous and new as we do, like working DOS a contemporary ThinkPad X13, and working Slack on Windows 3.11 For Workgroups on a slightly-less-modern however nonetheless twenty first Century Thinkpad T400.