34mm express card issue

[yankeesamurai]

I have a T420, Its in Excellent Condition, recently decided to add a 34mm express card. Received card, inserted into slot, nothing happened, I was expecting the usual hardware recognition, but ..got nothing. After messing with drivers, Bios settings, windows settings, running lenovo pci diagnostics, ect... I determined the card was dysfunctional (by process of ommision ) and sent it back.. got the replacement and guess what, it does the same thing... nothing...well.. just short of that... when I insert the 34mm express card, i can see the led blink once on the usb stick inserted into the card.. i can see the hdd led on the keyboard deck blink very very lightly...for a while... but again..nothing....happens.

So I really dont want to think the slot is bad, yet... any other ideas...but ive probably tried them all already... the express card even
came with its own drivers... useless...

I even tried in linux, same issue...then i command the system to read out all pci and usb ports... I think I see the express card..but of course its idenitifed as SLOT+ ... so I cant be sure if thats the express card or the sd card reader... so not much help there...

lenovo pci diagnostics say all good on the pci buss...

so whats a guy to do..?
dual booting windows 7 sp1, windows 8.1 , linux mint debian 2,

[dr_st]

What card is it (exact model)?

[yankeesamurai]

What card is it (exact model)?

that would matter why ?

the T420 can handle class 1 & class 2 cards, AS LONG AS THE BIOS IS SET TO AUTO DETECT FOR EXPRESS CARDS, WHICH IT IS....

There are no restrictions ON ANY KIND OF 34MM CARD when it comes to the initial trouble shooting issue, ONLY THAT THE CARD BE FUNCTIONING ..

which is :

THE PCI BUSS DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE 34MM EXPRESS CARD SLOT AT ALL,( ZERO WINDOWS REACTION TO NEW DEVICE INSERTED) EVEN WHEN A KNOWN GOOD CARD IS INSERTED, OR AT LEAST THERE IS NO PLACE I CAN SEE WHERE IT DETECTS IT...IN WINDOWS 7 , 8, LINUX DEBIAN, HOWEVER...I KNOW THE CARD PORT IS ALIVE, BECUASE THE LED BLINKS ONCE ON THE USB STICK ATTACHED TO THE 34MM EXPRESS CARD WHEN INSERTED.

I HIGHLY DOUBT THE EXPRESS CARD SLOT IS BAD, BUT..THERE ARE 2 HALFS TO ITS FUNCTION - POWER & DATA I/O , I CAN CONFIRM POWER, BUT NO WAY TO SEE DATA OR CARD SLOT ITSELF IN ANY WINDOWS INDICATOR I CAN FIND...

BUT EVEN IF I COULD...IT WOULDNT TELL ME ABOUT DATA I/O FROM THE CARD SLOT AS ITS ON THE PCI BUSS AND IT APPEARS TO BE WORKING FINE PER ALL DIAGNOSTICS CHECKS.

AGIAN, THE CARD ITSELF IS NOT THE ISSUE HERE... THE CARD IS A SIMPLE HI QUALITY USB 3 SINGLE SLOT 34MM EXPRESS CARD ADAPTER
MODEL # ECUSB3511 STARTECH.COM

SO THE T420 HAS BEEN AROUND FOR WHAT... 5 TO 8 YEARS... AND NO ONE HERE ON THIS FORUM HAS EXPERIENCED AN UNRECOGNIZED CARD SLOT ?

REALLY...... HARD TO IMAGINE....

[dr_st]

that would matter why ?

Because in a fantasy world, everything works just like it should on paper. In the real world, sometimes there are problems, as you've experienced. Sometimes the problems are specific to a particular card, hence my question.

When nothing is inserted into the slot, it doesn't show up anywhere. When a card is inserted, it will either show as a device under one of the PCIE root ports (forgot which one), or under one of the USB ports, depending on whether the card is a PCIe or a USB one. In your case, it's a USB3.0 controller, which is a PCIE device.

It is possible that the slot is bad.

[yankeesamurai]

WELL YOU ARE / WERE CORRECT !!!

A very unusual thing happened last night, I was reinstalling windows 8, and I had finished, all went well,
then I installed some lenovo drivers which is a normal think for a thinkpad , so that went well, however later I noticed
that after installing the power managment driver, that the SSd was reading / writing at an enourmous pace, much like when a hard
drive is running , but you dont know why... there shouldnt have been anything on the system at that time to cause this..it was a new install,
wondering if I had some trojan or malware on the drive HIDDEN somewhere and it was scouring my disk, I hit the power button and shut the system down,
the restarted it, booted up fine as it should, hard drive seems normal now..ok im happy, but in about 5 mins the thinkpad had gotten so hot
that you could smell serious burning... OOOPPPPssss. so i shut it down,booted into safe mode, installed speedfan and set it to maximum continous
cooling... then rebooted.... booted up ok, system was very hot but speedfan cooled it right down..kept it normal.. OK..this os install is
comprimised in some manner, and by my interrupting that running on disk writing..whatever it was busted the power management and it was running wild... so I wiped the disk by repartitioning and then reinstalled
win 7... all was good... BUT MAN IT SMEEELLED BURNT ! it got HOT inside that thinkpad... checked out the entire system, all was good..no issues could i find..
ok good.. so just continued finishing the re install with apps...settings..ect..all good... checked the device mgr to make sure all drivers got installed..
hmmmmm....theres one that didnt, usb driver..hmmm thats a new one...installed several kinds...nothing seemed to fix it... after messing with it
for a while, I figured it out... WOW..I would never have guessed what it was..

THE 34MM EXPRESS CARD & SLOT THAT WOULD NEVER WORK... IS NOW WORKING ! THAT SLOT WANTS A DRIVER FOR THAT CARD ! WOW.. OK...AFTER THINKING ON IT FOR
SOME TIME.. I HAVE FIGURED OUT WHAT HAPPENED HERE.. I AM A CAREER ELECTRONIC TECH AND SO I KNOW THAT THE THINKPAD GOT HOT ENOUGH IN THERE TO MELT SOLDER...IT WAS HOT!
THERE HAD TO HAVE BEEN A BROKEN / CRACKED SOLDER CONNECTION SOMEWHERE IN THAT EXPRESS CARD SLOT OR SYSTEM...AND IT GOT REPAIRED BY MELTING..(its not uncommon for this
to happen, ati and nvidia video cards will overhead and unsolder themselves internally...if their fan goes out..

SO..NOW.. I HAVE A WORKING EXPRESS CARD SLOT... JUST GOTTA GET THE DRIVER
FOR THE CARD IN THERE... ok driver installed, rebooted.. yep its workin !!!! holy cow !

THANKS ANYONE WHO TRIED TO HELP...