high speed USB pcmia card bus on an A31

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cybercorsair · #1 Post by **cybercorsair** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 6:30 pm

Ok I an a31 I tried to use a 2.0 USB card bus to get the higher speed USB for some 2.0 drives i have and well it would not work.
I could get the system to see the card but some times it would drop and it would see the drives then stop.

I did read some place on her but can't find it now on some cards not working on the A30 or 31?

any info would be of help.
Also need to find a good wiresless card the will work with XP and Linux andlet me hook in a external att to it.

Ok thanks

CC

Wilsonflyer · #2 Post by **Wilsonflyer** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 8:58 pm

How ironic is this!

I have a hong-kong-charlie 2.0 USB card I tried on mine yesterday with EXACTLY the same results.

I need it to catch Ghost images on an external drive and 1.1 USB ain't gonna cut it so I'm VERY interested in hearing the answer too.

If it matters or means anything to anybody, my generic card's chipset appears to be an "Ali" something I think. It's not in right now but I'm pretty sure that's right.

Anybody got any ideas for us?

Orevin · #3 Post by **Orevin** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 9:15 pm

You will probably need a USB card with an extra/external power supply. Disconnect all other USB appliances that are connected, maybe this will give you enough power to access your drive.

Wilsonflyer · #4 Post by **Wilsonflyer** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 9:33 pm

Orevin wrote:You will probably need a USB card with an extra/external power supply. Disconnect all other USB appliances that are connected, maybe this will give you enough power to access your drive.

May be but it seems a bit strange (at least in my case) that off the built-in 1.1 ports, the drive works fine w/o external power.

I had considered that until I thought I had disproved my theory on the built-in ports. Guess I need to find an appropriate wall-wart for my drive and see where that leads me.

They make a CARD that's induced by external channel power??? Wow. Never heard of that.

ARD · #5 Post by **ARD** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:43 pm

You can also use a USB hub that uses a power source like
AC current.

christopher_wolf · #6 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:55 pm

I would go with an externally powered hub; I can't see much of a reason to have it running off the power from the Thinkpad unless you want to be really mobile.

Wilsonflyer · #7 Post by **Wilsonflyer** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 11:08 pm

christopher_wolf wrote:I would go with an externally powered hub; I can't see much of a reason to have it running off the power from the Thinkpad unless you want to be really mobile.

I certainly appreciate your perspective but in my case, buying a 2.5" enclosure with an 80G drive is sorta defeated in purpose by dragging around a wall-wart and/or hub/wall-wart that's bigger and less portable than the device itself.

Again; I agree with your accessment from a technical standpoint but from a philisophical standpoint, the wall-wart is just one more piece I have to drag around and keep up with. Many times, I'm lucky to be in a computer room where I MIGHT be able to find ONE empty outlet for my laptop. I'm never lucky enough to find two outlets much less one of them with enough space to support a wall-wart. Any outlet with enough space to support a wall-wart, already has one in it, I assure you.

That means now I not only have to deal with a wall-wart and/or a powered USB bub with a wall-wart and an extra USB cable for the hub, but a power strip too. See where this is headed?

USB 2.0 should supply enough power to the channel to support "reasonable" devices requiring power from the channel. I would think a 2.5" external drive would certainly fall into that category. Any PC Card/PCMCIA card that doesn't provide enough power to support reasonable devices on the channel shouldn't be considered 2.0 spec compliant.

OK. Sorry. Off my soap-box now.

Again; does anybody know of a card that works to the complete spec? What about the Adaptec? Pricey, I know but if it works, it would be worth it in my case anyway. I just don't want to buy 3 more that don't work to find one that does.

Orevin · #8 Post by **Orevin** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 11:25 pm

There are cards available, that come with a cable to connect to an existing USB or PS/2 port to provide additional power. I did a quick search on Pricegrabber and found this one. I'm sure you will find more, try ebay too.

cpn · #9 Post by **cpn** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 11:44 pm

We talked about this about a month ago. see:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=20231

I would first determine how much power your drive actually needs and then go from there. I use the apricorn USB card which has a 500ma port and NO external bulge, instead it uses a dongle. My paticular drive uses about 495ma so is right at the edge, but it does work without any other adapter. When I use other drives, I use a ps/2 to power adapter to provide up to 1a of power to a hd.

Craig

FuguTabetai · #10 Post by **FuguTabetai** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 1:43 am

I have an A31p that I run Fedora Core 4 (linux) on, and Windows XP (iTunes for about 20 minutes a day to pick up podcasts.) I use a USB2/Firewire PCMCIA card.

Under linux, the card does not power my external 2.5" drive (using two cables, one for power, one for data.) Under Windows XP, the card will power the external drive (again, using both cables plugged into the card.(

In either case, I can plug in the "power" USB cable into the 1.1 ports on the back of the machine, and the "data" USB cable into the PCMCIA card, and it works (although the cables are a mess.)

I am at a loss to explain this behavior, although it is plausible that the linux driver has something to do with it.

Try using the 1.1 USB port for power, and the card for data. If you drive only has one cable and is supposed to draw all of its power from a single USB2 port, then you might just be out of luck.

peterscott · #11 Post by **peterscott** » Fri May 12, 2006 4:44 am

Search ebay for 33L3245 - these are boxed kits, several available at the moment. Contain IBM USB 2.0 cards with 2-ports on a dongle, one 500mA one 100mA, and a driver disk. I've put one in my A31p and it seems to work, though I haven't tried an external drive (just a camera). Card can detect over-current and close down the port, sends a system message I believe. I won't short circuit mine to find out!
Nice if you want to use a non-protruding card instead of a 4-port one, and you don't want a firewire/USB combo. They're not too spenny either (Buy Now under EUR 30, likely cheaper in US...?)

Good luck,
Peter

#12 Post by **schen** » Fri May 12, 2006 9:59 am

I'm currently using one of the Adaptec USB2.0/1394 cards and it isn't any better than the others. In fact, the instruction manual specifically states that with certain devices you might have to use external power which they go on to say is not provided or available from them.

Like many others my experience has been that I'm usually in good shape when I use the adapter for data and another port for additional power (I usually carry a USB to PS2 adapter for that). My enclosure came with one of the 2-headed cables so it's not a big deal.

I'm also mystified by why the manufacturer don't produce ones that provide enough power. I might be wrong, but I think the Cardbus slot should be able to provide it.

JHEM · #13 Post by **JHEM** » Fri May 12, 2006 11:23 am

schen wrote:I'm also mystified by why the manufacturer don't produce ones that provide enough power. I might be wrong, but I think the Cardbus slot should be able to provide it.

You're wrong.

Regards,

James

#14 Post by **schen** » Fri May 12, 2006 12:17 pm

OK, I believe you, but it doesn't seem logical since there have been a wide variety of devices over the years including scanners, CD-ROMs etc. that draw their power as well as interface via the PCMCIA slot. I'll have to pass this one on to my brother who chaired the committee that set the standards for PCMCIA.

edit

Now that I think about it some more, it ABSOLUTELY doesn't make sense, since the drive upgrade solution that IBM sold for some time was a repackaged Apricorn product which uses a PC Card interface to clone the original drive to the target.

JHEM · #15 Post by **JHEM** » Fri May 12, 2006 1:54 pm

schen wrote:Now that I think about it some more, it ABSOLUTELY doesn't make sense, since the drive upgrade solution that IBM sold for some time was a repackaged Apricorn product which uses a PC Card interface to clone the original drive to the target.

And I've got one of those sitting right here n the desk next to me, so what?

It's the new DRIVES that are responsible for the problems, not the PC card or USB slots. Many of them require too much power on spinup, hence the twin USB conectors and PC cards with PS2 power dongles.

When you plug in a new drive and it just sits there going tick, tick, tick, you know it's time to either call the bomb squad or connect whatever secondary power cord was provided.

Yes, by all means, ask your brother. I'd love to read his response.

Regards,

James

#16 Post by **schen** » Fri May 12, 2006 2:22 pm

I'm certain that you're right on that since the last time he used the Apricorn system to clone, it gave him some errors (it was a 5400rpm drives). But it still doesn't expain why some of the 4200rpm drives behave the same way when connected through a USB 2.0 to PCMCIA adapter.

cbcb3 · #17 Post by **cbcb3** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 12:48 am

The problem I had with my usb2.0/pcmcia combo card and A31 (XP + Sp2) was that the OS would freeze up when I tried to transfer large size file like over 100MBytes. I had to press the power button to turn it off and do a cold restart . This happened after I lost the original driver cd and used the driver file from xp sp2 after OS reinstallation. Microsoft has a hotfix for bulky file transfer problem in XP sp2 but the service is not free for OEM version windows users.

After I got the correct driver file for the combo card my laptop works trouble free. I just transfered a single 3.5 gigbytes file from pc to my ipod without any problem. So I would suggest to get the correct driver files for you card.

For the external power supply, I didn't use it when I transfer file to ipod. It is used for power supply so the ipod does not charge but there's no affection to data transfer.

cybercorsair · #18 Post by **cybercorsair** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 5:22 pm

Orevin wrote:You will probably need a USB card with an extra/external power supply. Disconnect all other USB appliances that are connected, maybe this will give you enough power to access your drive.

The card I had gpt was power with an adaptor and said it need it only if i use more than 2 or the USB slots but I got the same results. Hard drives would not show up or I get a lock up or both.

I was working with 2.0 external case with hard drive of my own and also was trying 2 Acomdata 120gig 2.0 Rocketpods that I use for data storage. Could the PCMIA slots not like the 2.0 power setup ?

and again this my A31:

IBM ThinkPad A31 Laptop P4 CDRW 15"LCD model 2652-C4U
* Intel Pentium 4 Processor at 1.6GHz
* 256MB DDr 2100 ram <--- now has 1gig or ram
* 30GB hard drive
* CDRW drive
* Floppy drive
* ATi graphics radeon 7500 16meg
* Large 15" LCD
* 10/100 ethernet and 56k modem
* Working battery and ac adapter

ElbertR · #19 Post by **ElbertR** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:13 am

If you need to use an extra hard drive, just get yourself an ultrabay hard drive enclosure (02k6067). Adds another IDE drive, even faster than USB 2.0

You can also use a thinkpad docking station model 2631 (which has another ultrabay and also a PCI slot in which you can put a USB 2.0 card.

high speed USB pcmia card bus on an A31

high speed USB pcmia card bus on an A31

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Adaptec Card

Re: Adaptec Card

Cardbus slot

Re: Cardbus slot

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