IOGEAR 5-Port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 PCI Card GIC251U

by Iogear

Product Details

Product Manual [178kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 6.5 x 3 inches ; 6.4 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000BZ2WA
• Item model number: GIC251U
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (164 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #17 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Computer Components > Network Cards
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 5, 2003

Product Description

IOGEAR brings you new five-port USB 2.0 PCI Card (GIC251U). USB 2.0 moves data at a blazing rate of 480 Mbps (Megabits per second), and is fully backward compatible with the first generation of USB devices. With the increase in speed, USB 2.0 offers enhanced functionality, allowing more devices to share the increased bandwidth. The new USB 2.0 PCI card will allow you to take full advantage of the USB 2.0 technology on your current USB 1.1 systems.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars works like a charm, July 24, 2004

By 

Zod Bomb (Vienna, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: IOGEAR 5-Port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 PCI Card GIC251U (Personal Computers)

I have windows XP and ordered this PCI card. I opened up my PC box, took out the old creative sound blaster from its PCI slot and slid in the Iogear USB 2.0 PCI card. I booted up my computer and voila! XP automatically detected the card and I have my mouse connected to one of the 4 exposed external USB ports. Its working and no problems encountered at all.

Note that there are 4 slots exposed externally, and 1 is an internal USB slot.

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars IOGear 5 port USB 2.0 - Mac deep sleep issue, October 2, 2005

By 

K. Monteith - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: IOGEAR 5-Port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 PCI Card GIC251U (Personal Computers)

The card installed easily into my G4 tower, and USB devices work fine. However, the card does not support deep sleep on the Mac with OSX 10.4.2, which is not reflected in the listing or advertising. The G4 requires a hard restart every time it goes into deep sleep (fans and drives powered down) with the card installed.

125 of 140 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 Stars - but only if you know the following:, September 1, 2004

By 

Kathryn L. Evans (Caroga Lake, New York United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: IOGEAR 5-Port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 PCI Card GIC251U (Personal Computers)

I bought a Compaq Presario 5410US from Amazon in 2002, as well as a Cannon digital camera and printer, probably purchases similar to those made by many Amazon customers. I suppose, therefore, that many of you have also been frustrated by the slow downloading of digital pictures speed of the old USB 1.0 port, but have been leeary of tampering with your hardware. So, was I, but this product was easy to install and has worked great, truly greatly decreasing the time it takes to download pictures (at least 10 times faster, probably much more).
BUT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS! The fine print says, the system works with Windows XP if you have "Service Pack 1" installed. It took me a long time to figure out what that was and how to install it, but it is really simple. Do a "Google Search" on the internet to find the free site for downloading "Windows XP Service Pack 1." A warning says the download and installation might take 45 minutes with a regular slow modem and phone line connection. I have the slowest of internet connections and modems, but it only took 10 minutes to download and install the service pack 1 free upgrade. Then, you need to reboot (i.e. turn off and turn on again) your computer with this upgrade.
I couldn't find my computer manual when I needed it, but by clicking on the "Start" button on my computer and an "about your computer" link, I was able to access a diagram of the insides of my computer, showing where the extra PCI slots are. This is probably obvious to most people, they are the only empty, pretty long slots. The instructions say to just slip the USB 2.0 Card into the slot - pretty much true, but on my Compaq computer you also have to unscrew and remove a sort of metal "flap" that has served as a cover for the slot opening of the computer box, protecting the insides of the computer, until a PCI card with ports is installed. For the techno-phobic, this was a scary thing to do without explicit instructions to do so, though in hindsight, it should have been obvious.
After you have downloaded the Service Pack 1 upgrade, installed the USB 2.0 Card, and rebooted your computer, a "New Hardware Detected Wizard Window" will be shown on your screen. It says to install the new hardware CD software, if the hardware came with one. If you have Windows XP, you must download the Service Pack and NOT put the software CD in your CD drive (I tried every other combination of wrong moves). When you see the Wizard, do NOT close the wizard box and do NOT put in the software CD, just click "NEXT" and follow the simple instructions of the Wizard Windows. Within a few minutes the Wizard will have set up the computer to recognize and utilize the USB 2.0 PCI Card.
My pictures from my (wonderful, new) Cannon Digital Rebel camera now download with amazing speed, but I should mention that I use a ScanDisk 512MB ULTRA II CF card and a ScanDisk 8 in 1 USB 2.0 HI-speed Reader. Before I installed the new PCI card, even with that equipment download was extremely slow, but I do not know if it would now be so fast without those products.
Most of what I have said here would be obvious to the techno-savvy, but I lost an afternoon to making stupid mistakes because I didn't know the above, and was about to write a 1-star review, panning this product, until I figured all this out. If you follow the instructions above, you could probably go through all of these steps in half an hour and be very happy with your results! Hope this saves some of you the headaches I went through.