similar boxes; one usb wifi the other no way!

I'm working with two similar boxes these days, an ASUS motherboard and 
an MSI one, both over 10 years old and both running AMD phenom CPU's. 
Both have the same 10 Linux distros installed, and both have USB ports 
that work providing 'otherwise' conventional USB services.

Any one of about half a dozen USB wifi transceivers that I have will 
work on the Asus box connecting it to my phone's hot-spot, but NONE of 
them work on the MSI box with any of the same OSes.

I figure it's gotta be a hardware issue, but WHAT?