Old GP-Wiz 40 and Q-code AE boot error

[RainnWater]

Long story so bear with me. Recently updated my 15 year old Mame cabinet with a newer ASUS 99 x USB 3.1 motherboard. And have had lots of boot errors showing AE (legacy boot event) Q code on the motherboard. After a LOT of reading and trial and error I am 97 percent sure it is caused by old GP-wiz 40 interface boards. (I have 2 GP-wiz 40 boards as the control panel is 4 player and has 60 inputs/switches.) If they are unplugged and the BIOS is set to not use USB 3.0 drivers I boot up with no errors every time. So, my questions are this. Does that make sense? And what should i replace them with? Do the newer GP-Wiz 40 boards have better USB legacy support (newer firmware)? Or should I look into using Ultimarc I-pac 4? And can you use more then 1 I-pac 4 at a time. Like I said I really need to be able to have 60 inputs and the I-pac 4 only has 56. Any thoughts would be great.

[RandyT]

I'm assuming you have an X99 mobo, but which one exactly?

Almost all modern mobos have at least a couple of USB 2.0 ports (the black ones) due to the many issues one can have when trying to use earlier USB devices on 3.x ports.  Many implementations have fallback issues, which is why they are still included on new mobo designs. 

If you are not using those 2.0 ports for your GP-Wiz 40 boards, you should be.  If you don't have enough of those, you might want to try a cheap USB 2.0 hub connected to one of those ports.

FWIW, I have a customer which has a few installations, each with 6 x GP-Wiz 40 boards, with no issues so this is something specific to your motherboard/BIOS...or you aren't using the correct ports for that mobo.

[RainnWater]

Thanks for the reply. The actual model of my motherboard is an ASUS X99-E WS/USB 3.1. I went with this model because I wanted to get the best USB ports for using Sinden light guns. They require a lot of current when using recoil and figured this would have the most robust ports. Unfortunately, there is only blue (USB 3.0) ports.  And they seem very reluctant to work with any older USB 2.0 devices. No matter what you set the bios to with the GP-WIZ 40s connected it hangs on Q-Code AE when booting (80% of the time - will boot correctly sometimes). I have replaced my 2.0 hubs with 3.0 hubs and switched back. Still same problem.  You can turn off the USB 3.0 driver in the bios and have it hand off the driver duties to the operating system (Windows 10 in my case) but that does not fix concern. If you tun off the handoff option and leave the 2.0 drivers enabled and 2.0 drive handoff enabled and it will boot correctly every time as long as the GP=WIZ 40s are unplugged. Thats why I think replacing the GP-WIZ40s will help. But maybe its just a band aid because even with the GP WIZ 40s unplugged you cannot turn on the USB 3.0 drivers in the bios and have it boot consistently. I have to have the 3.0 drivers disabled no matter what I have plugged into the USB ports. I also have 2 GP WIZ LED controllers, an ICE track ball/mouse controller, a windows USB key board and 2 GP WIZ paddle controllers. But like I said. If the GD-WIZ 40s are unplugged I can get it to boot with all the other controllers plugged in as long as I turn off all USB 3.0 drivers in the BIOS and have the handoff turned off.

[RandyT]

Unfortunately, that mobo has seen a lot of negative comments about compatibility and BIOS issues.   Even with regard to CPUs, RAM and USB 3.0 devices.  I get the feeling that these mobos were rushed out during the crypto-mining craze, given the number of full-size PCIE slots, and compatibility took the back seat to performance concerns.

If you have already updated the BIOS (and if not, definitely do this...the original BIOS had a lot of issues) then I can only suggest the basic USB troubleshooting steps.  I.e. make sure that you are not trying to connect too many devices to one physical USB port through an unpowered hub.  Physical USB ports can have a number of actual connectors, and the number varies depending on the motherboard, so watch out for power consumption.  Try using different combinations of devices on different ports to see if anything changes.  The fact that it boots ~20% of the time is very odd, so there might be hope.     

Also, from what I have been reading, a Legacy Boot Event error is related to storage/boot configuration issues.  The only way that a gamepad device could be responsible for something like that is if the BIOS is mis-identifying one of the USB devices as a bootable device and attempting to use it to boot from.  So, it might be worth looking at the boot order, removing any non-bootable devices from the list and perhaps additionally disabling fast boot if it's enabled.

[RainnWater]

Thanks again Randy. I do have an update and feel a bit stupid and thought I had a solution. But it only changed things, not fix things. I realized that when I updated my mobo, it was from an old 10+ year old one. I updated to Win10 a little over a year ago with no problems, but when I updated the mobo a month ago I neglected to update the hard drive partitioning. It was still MBR so UEFI was mad. I ran MBR2GPT and thought this would fix things. It ran with no errors and booted up. I reconnected the GP WIZ 40s and now I get a b1 Q-code error, not the AE. Unhooking the GP WIZ 40s it boots up fine. So back to the drawing board. I will look into the BIOS and remove all the boot devices except my C drive and see what happens.

[RandyT]

...now I get a b1 Q-code error, not the AE.

Very odd.  Everything I read about that one has been related to bad or incompatible DRAM sticks.

Maybe a different interface will make that mobo happier, but it might be crapshoot.  Probably only one way to find out .

[RainnWater]

After a lot of reading and research, I have started to not take the displayed Q-code for gospel. You are saying that b1 seems to be associated with memory. I know the memory is good. My personal opinion on Q-codes is, according to several sources, that UEFI can test multiple hardware devices at the same time. If UEFI finds a problem with poorly programmed firmware and doesn't recognize what it is while it is also testing the memory, it could stop and display the b1 code even though it is my GP Wiz 40 causing an issue. That being said, I ended up unplugging all of my USB devices except for a basic mouse and keyboard. Computer boots fine every time. I cleared the CMOS and reset the UEFI. The UEFI UI does not have a way to remove individual boot devices that I can find. But I can set it to only boot from HDDs. Also set CSM to enabled, not AUTO, Booted to windows 10 and then plugged in all the USB devices including the troublesome GP WIZ 40s. Tested that they all work and windows recognizes them. After I was sure all was good, I restarted my computer. It took probably 20 minutes for it to shut down and restart. But it boots up with no problems so far.  I'm guessing that it all goes back to the EUFI and not having it set right. Hopefully it stays working. Thanks for the help.

[RandyT]

The fact that Windows can see and use the GP-Wiz40's indicates that the devices have enumerated correctly and function as intended.  The issue is the BIOS of this particular motherboard, perhaps coupled with poor fallback of the USB 3.0 chipset it uses.  It could be assuming the presence of certain USB features which not all devices support, and when the devices don't respond to those optional features, the motherboard simply panics, rather than continuing gracefully.  Again, this is a BIOS implementation issue with this particular motherboard, as there are thousands of GP-Wiz40 devices in use and this is the first and only report of an issue like this.  There also seems to be no shortage of other users with this motherboard complaining of similar compatibility issues with a broad range of different devices.   

At the end of the day, your (now deprecated) motherboard was specialized and really intended for applications like machine-learning and 3D-graphic-intensive productivity applications.  My understanding is that adding proper support for legacy devices can hinder the speed at which some newer technologies are able to operate.  Given the intended use of the mobo when it was designed in 2014, absolute peak performance was it's goal, not overall peripheral compatibility.  This is most likely the reason why it doesn't offer USB 2.0 ports.

Something similar is starting to happen with cell phones.  Most current flagship phones no longer support storage expansion with SDHC cards.  Some believe that the manufacturers are just being cheap or forcing customers to purchase overpriced models with larger storage.  What is actually happening is that the SOC manufacturers want support deprecated as it necessarily reduces the performance of their chips, opting for on-board storage with a wider bus path and/or increased speed.

If there is a takeaway to any of this, I would be very leery of using a workstation/server motherboard which does not support USB 2.0 as part of a system upgrade where continued use of existing peripherals is desired.  Something like this is probably better suited for a new system in the capacity for which it is intended and using new and/or verified compatible peripherals.  When it comes to "workstation-class" machines, those compatible peripherals may be more limited in scope by virtue of where support is focused.

[RainnWater]

Just a final follow up. I ended up replacing the GP-Wiz40s with IPAC4s. Even after all the tweaking of the UEFI the computer would still hang with a B1 error code at times with the GP-Wiz40s. The IPAC4s work flawlessly. And they actually were easier to configure. Just wanted to reply in case someone else runs into a similar problem.

[RandyT]

The BIOS in your particular motherboard is likely more adept at handling generic keyboard devices, which is what those units present themselves as at boot time.  Glad to hear that you found a solution for your MB!