Allegro Pro 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C PCIe Card (USB3C-4PM-E) Support Library

Description: This software installs a kernel extension for current Sonnet USB 3.2 PCIe cards that tells macOS that the Sonnet ports can charge iOS devices and have the power required to operate the Apple SuperDrive and bus-powered peripherals plugged into the Apple wired USB keyboard. This kext does not affect non-Apple devices.

Note: This driver does not support the 2019 Mac Pro. The cards will work fine in the 2019 Mac Pro, just not for connecting an Apple USB 2.0 SuperDrive or connecting a mouse (or thumb drive, etc.) to Apple USB wired keyboard.

Description: ASMxHCI_FWUpdateV1291_251230700240V1.exe is a Windows app that updates ASMedia ASM3142 firmware to revision 251230700240 in the following Sonnet Technologies products:

Allegro Pro USB-C 8-Port PCIe Card (USB3C-8PM-E)

Allegro Pro 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A PCIe Card (USB3-PRO-4P10-E)

Allegro Pro 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C PCIe Card (USB3C-4PM-E)

Allegro USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C PCIe Card (USB3C-2PM-E)

McFiver PCIe Card (G10E-USBC-M2-E)

Fusion Dual 2.5-inch SSD RAID PCIe Card (FUS-SSD-2RAID-E)

Note: This release provides a fix for controller detection failure with certain motherboards with Intel® 800/700/600 Series desktop chipsets.

Description: This is the English language quick start guide for the Sonnet Allegro Pro 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C PCIe Card.

This is revision G of this document.

None of Sonnet's Cards with USB 2.0 or USB 3 (either Type A or Type C) ports support the Apple SuperDrive. You must use a built-in USB 2.0 or 3.0 port on your Mac.

According to http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5630, "The Apple USB SuperDrive is compatible with Mac models from 2008 and later that don't have a built-in optical drive."

High power bus-powered drives are supported by the current and recent line of Sonnet USB 3 cards, plus the Tango 3.0 PCIe (FW8USB3A-E) cards, but not the discontinued USB 3.0 PCIe cards (USB3-E or USB3M-E), the initial version of the Tango 3.0 PCIe card (FWUSB3-E), or any USB 2.0 cards.

If you are still having trouble, this may be a problem due to a voltage drop in the USB cable. Use the following guide to select the correct cable for your application.

In general, these cables should work with SSDs or optical drives drawing up to 2A of current:

Type........Power-Carrying Wires....Cable Outside Diameter....Maximum Cable Length

USB 2.0..........28 AWG...............................3.8mm...........................0.15m (0.5 ft)

USB 2.0..........24 AWG...............................4.7mm...........................0.3m ( 1 ft)

USB 2.0..........22 AWG...............................5.0mm..............................1m ( 3 ft)

USB 3.0..........20 AWG...............................6.0mm..............................1m ( 3 ft)

Generally, the gauge of the power-carrying wires can be inferred from the cable outside diameter.

To minimize power usage during sleep, power is removed from PCIe cards. Because of this power-saving specification, a USB 3 PCIe card is unable to maintain USB port power during sleep. In macOS, this result in a storage device disconnect upon wake from sleep. The storage device will automatically remount, but the system reports a disconnect message. Because macOS flushes all caches before sleeping, this disconnect should never result in any loss of data.

All Sonnet Allegro (and Fusion Dual 2.5" SSD RAID) PCIe Cards use a macOS pre-installed driver.

These cards are compatible with macOS 10.10 in the MacPro 3,1; 4,1 & 5,1 and in Thunderbolt 2 Expansion chassis.

These cards are not compatible with macOS 10.11, due to a bug in the Apple driver.

These cards are compatible with macOS 10.12 (2)-10.14 in the MacPro 5,1 and in Thunderbolt 2 & 3 Expansion chassis.

These cards are compatible with macOS 10.15-macOS 12 in the 2019 Mac Pro and in Thunderbolt 2 & 3 Expansion chassis.

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Notes:

- These cards are not compatible with Thunderbolt 1 expansion chassis.

- macOS 10.12 erroneously reports a 5Gbps connection when connected at 10Gbps.

- The maximum Apple-supported OS for the Mac Pro 3,1 and 4,1 is OS X 10.11. Dosdude1 offers patchers to allow installation of newer versions of macOS. The Apple USB 3 driver in these patched newer versions will support the Allegro cards.

- Performance of the Allegro cards may be limited by the Mac Pro 5,1 PCIe 2.0 bandwidth.

These cards are compatible with only Thunderbolt 2 or 3 PCIe expansion chassis; they are not compatible with Thunderbolt 1 PCIe expansion chassis (unless they have been upgraded to Thunderbolt 2).

All current and recent Sonnet USB 3 cards have resettable fuses to protect the ports from an overcurrent condition. To reset the fuses, you must remove power to the card by shutting down your machine. (Restarting is not sufficient.) After turning the computer back on, the ports should start working again. If the fuses continue to trip, then you may have a device that draws too much USB Bus power (more than 2 Amps).

USB 3 is the specification revision published by the USB Implementers Forum. Dot 0, dot 1, or dot 2 is the revision level of the specification. USB 3.2 superseded USB 3.1, which superceded USB 3.0. Each version of the specification retained what was in the previous specification and added something new. USB 3.1 added 10Gbps. USB 3.2 adds 20Gbps.

Our cards have not changed. We have updated the naming on our web site to conform with the latest specification.

This chart may help...

USB 3.0____USB 3.1___________________USB 3.2________________

USB 3.0 -> USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps) --> USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps)

..................USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) -> USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps)

.............................................................USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20Gbps)

The uniqueness of Sonnet USB 3.2 products is each USB port has a USB power switch (MOSFET) that manages and monitors the current flow of the USB port. The USB switch limits the current draw when a new USB device is connected minimizing the voltage droop of the main USB 5V power rail, thereby protecting devices connected to other USB ports from going offline because of port power droop. The USB switch is also a very effective current limiter that does not degrade over trips the way a resettable poly-fuse would.

We connect each USB 3 controller with two lanes of PCIe 2. Each controller has 1000MB/s bandwidth which is enough bandwidth for the fastest devices you can connect, such as USB 3.1 Gen 2 NVMe SSDs. Because the read/write bandwidth is independent, on one controller you can be reading from one SSD at 1000MB/s, and writing to another at 1000MB/s, plus the same on the 2nd controller for an aggregate transfer rate of 4000MB/s. What makes this possible is that Sonnet uses the advanced ASMedia 3142 Controller that supports Multiple INs, which means that reads can commence on one port before a write has competed on the other port.

A PCIe 3 Bridge chip would cost you $50 more, but would give you incremental performance only if you needed to continually simultaneously read--or simultaneously write--to four USB 3.1 Gen 2 NVMe devices, a very unusual use case.

In some computers, USB 3 devices connected to Allegro Pro USB 3 card models USB3C-4PM-E and USB3-PRO-4P10-E are not detected by Linux.

You can fix this by adding the Linux kernel parameter pci=disable_acs_redir=pci:12D8:2308 to the computer's Linux boot script. (Describing how to add a Linux kernel parameter to the computer's Linux boot script is beyond the scope of this FAQ.)

This parameter sets disable_acs_redir for PCIe devices with id 12D8:2308 (which is the PCIe bridge chip on these cards). This parameter disables PCI Express Access Control Services (ACS) functions ACS P2P Request Redirect and ACS P2P Completion Redirect. This has no effect on operation unless you are in a virtualized environment, in which case you must assign all four USB 3 ports to a single virtual machine.

The Sonnet Allegro USB-C and Allegro Pro 4-port Type A USB 3.2 cards support the fastest speed of each device independently on each port. The Sonnet cards supports "Multiple Ins", which means that that the host can issue a read request to one endpoint device and then proceed with other transactions without waiting for the response from the first device. Supporting Multiple Ins also improves performance to mutiple Gen 1 devices on a downstream Gen 2 hub connected to a Sonnet card Gen 2 port.

I am having power problems with my Allegro USB PCIe Card.

If you are experiencing issues with your Allegro USB PCIE card, try the following troubleshooting steps.

When you connect any USB peripheral to the device, is anything shown in About This Mac > System Report > Hardware > USB?

1) Regarding the issue: this may be that the USB devices are pulling more than 2A of power per device.
The Allegro cards include resettable fuses built into these cards’ ports that will trip when a connected device pulls more than 2A of power. Have you tried connecting one device to port 1, and another to port 4?
See our tech note here for more details, and how to reset these.

2) Also, we found that many hard drive and USB peripheral manufacturers will include a gen 1 low power USB 3 cable with their devices.
These cables do technically meet the requirements of a USB 3 cable, but, are often not super speed, not gen 2, and will not universally function at higher speeds.

Other customers have reported similar issues of non-connectivity, disconnections, or, being limited to slower speeds with our Allegro Pro card before as well.
These cases were resolved by the use of a higher quality and fully functional USB 3 cable.
We also note that some USB devices use a USB-C to USB-A port, but our cards only have USB-A or USB-C, necessitating the need for an adapter cable.
We do not know specifically which types of USB adapter cables you would need, but we can recommend a cable similar to these USB cables from Tripp-Lite, Cable Matters, Belkin, or Monster (if you can find the Monsters for cheap)
We would recommend only buying one of the cables, and testing it with one of the devices. Make sure that the cable is listed as ‘10Gbps compatible’ or ’super-speed, high-power, certified’ or similar.

If you are still having trouble, this may be a problem due to a voltage drop in the USB cable. Using a shorter or thicker cable can end up being the correct cable for your application, particularly for complex devices like the BMD.

In general, these cables should work with USB peripherals drawing up to 2A of current:
Type........Power-Carrying Wires....Cable Outside Diameter....Maximum Cable Length

USB 3..........20 AWG...............................6.0mm..............................1m ( 3 ft)

Generally, the gauge of the power-carrying wires can be inferred from the cable outside diameter.

3) Your Mac computer, or the USB/other peripherals, may require additional setup for best connection.
Make sure to disable FileVault, and similar encryption programs, and any anti-virus programs you may have.
You can try using the Apple Startup Security Utility to set External Boot to "Allow booting from external media” and “No Security." If this is already set, you must set it to "Disallow booting from external media”, “Full security” then restart, then set to "Allow booting from external media”, “No Security”, and restart again.
You can also try to disable SIP then test again, but we only recommend this if you feel comfortable with recovery console, Terminal commands, and modification to macOS.

Also, does the USB device or Hard Drive have (or require) a firmware/software update for optimized usage? Is there additional USB/HDD software required or recommended for use of these?
We have seen that some connected peripherals may need additional updates to function well, or, macOS security can prevent these from working (see above).

4) Regrettably, some peripherals or their software, may not be compatible with the chipset used on the card (ASMedia ASMx142)
Your USB peripheral OEM may also have other drivers, updates, or information available directly from their website.