Thinkpads Forum

http://ake-nb.com/cp/html/images/1328695530.jpg

I have two of these. They are sub $5 on ebay delivered.

I use them to add usb 3 cheaply to classic age laptops, I believe you need a T430 or better for USB3?

Anyway I have a habit where sometimes I buy a cheapo widget off Ebay and I dont use i until I need it.

Here's the thing, I have two of these same design whatever. Problem is they use different chipsets.

One is a NEC Renesas, the other is a Asus Asmedia whatever.

I dont know where the original CD driver disk is and really, who keeps that shat. Its probably full of china viruses anyway.

The only way I could find this out was that I had to google the VEN IDs.

I know these above cards are recommended by you guys here as they add 2 ports that run full speed but they are crazy to setup.

I believe you need a T430 or better for USB3?

Well, the T420s has one USB 3.0 port, but the regular T420 doesn't have any.

I dont know where the original CD driver disk is and really, who keeps that shat. Its probably full of china viruses anyway.

That's very true. I had my own adventure finding a USB 3.0 card for my X220, and in one store, there were viruses on every directory of the driver disc.

Aside from doing a google search for the PCI ID, you could use software like System Information Viewer to identify unknown devices.

Thing is, I was about to chuck one out and it CLEARLY wasnt responding to the NEC driver... that was until I did the VEN ID check and then downloaded a random driver (which is not a good thing) and it worked.

The both even have the same model number. Gotta love China.

Station-Drivers tend to have a good selection of drivers for all major chipsets, and they keep them updated regularly.
http://www.station-drivers.com/index.ph ... 30&lang=en

The Renesas-based one has good performance, but terrible compatibility. It doesn't work well with the PCIe ASPM settings on many laptops, which causes the system to become glitchy and unusable unless ASPM is disabled. Unfortunately, the X220 is one such system.

dr_st wrote:The Renesas-based one has good performance, but terrible compatibility.

I have to thank you for the extensive writeup on those USB 3.0 Expresscards.
It helped a lot, though in my case the choices were the "might not work" FL1100 and the "definitely gonna give problems" Renesas.

And there's the roulette that TonyJZX described, where you don't know if you'll receive an Asmedia card or a Renesas one.