Developer Meng has released xHCI98, a driver project designed to enable USB 3.x, Thunderbolt 3, and USB4 support on legacy operating systems, including Windows 98 SE. The driver addresses the lack of native xHCI support in older Windows versions, which typically prevents hot-plugging and limits the functionality of modern peripherals.
The software suite includes three primary components: the main xHCI98 driver for USB hubs and ports, xhciuas.sys for USB Attached SCSI storage, and xhcicm.sys for Thunderbolt 3 and USB4 docks or NVMe enclosures. It is primarily tested on Intel-based hardware, specifically a 2020 ThinkPad P14s Gen 1, which lacks a legacy EHCI controller.
The project was developed with significant AI assistance. Meng utilized Claude Fable 5.1 for project planning, Claude Opus 5.5 for writing the code, and Codex GPT 6 Astra to act as an adversarial reviewer. The developer notes that as a solo project, users may encounter bugs during operation.
The driver supports various versions of Windows up to Windows 7. The documentation provided by the developer includes instructions for hardware compatibility checks, installation procedures, and methods for updating or tuning the driver for specific system configurations.
