Windows 95 PCMCIA problem fixed

[onespeedbiker]

I am dealing with a Windows 95 on a 385ED and I can't get the PCMCIA Compact flash to work; I just acquired this PC with the hard drive is loaded with IBM branded OS (in the Device Manager) and software, so I don't know the history beyond that. I have the Card Soft wizard installed and it shows the PCMCIA flash card installed as a standard ide controller. But when I check the device manager, while the PCMCIA shows a Cirrus controller, there is an unknown device showing for the PCMCIA Card Services driver. I've tried upgrading the driver, Uninstalling and reinstalling "Card Soft PCMCIA driver for Windows 95" software and it always ends up with the PCMCIA Card Services being an unknown device. BTW, if you installed Windows 95 from a Thinkpad recovery disks, do not install the Card Soft PCMCIA driver for Windows 95. First, it is likely already installed and second, the automated fixes explained in the below post will not work.

[onespeedbiker]

Well I worked it out, kind of. Excuse this long post, but when I did a search for making PCMCIA work with Windows 95, there were a lot of questions and not many options (skip down to the 3rd paragraph if you want to get directly to the fix). I installed Windows 95 on the my 385ED, using a 380XD Recovery disk. At this point I inseted the PCMCIA Compact Flash adapter and noting happened; the reason for this 380XD recovery disk loaded 16 bit Dos drivers in the event one was to use a PCMCIA card to install Windows. At this point you need to go to the Control Panel PCMCIA utiltity. Click on the utility, and a dialog window will start, saying some PCMCIA drivers already installed could conflict with the 32 bit drivers, and asked me if I wanted to delete them. I said yes, and Windows restarted, and with the PCMCIA card still inserted, the PCMCIA drivers loaded as a Standard IDE/ESDI controller for the PCMCIA flash card and the PCMCIA card came to life. I checked the PCMCIA socket heading in the Device Manager, and the Cirrus Logic PCI to PCMCIA bridge was still there with the addition of PCMCIA Services and two Texas Instruments 1311 Device drivers. I also see the PCMCIA Services driver only appears when there is a PCMCIA card inserted. Also after a few boots, both the Texas Instruments 1311 drivers also disappeared, while the PCMCIA flash card continued to work.

I then found this post which explains it all. https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/ftpdir ... 01655.html and skip down to 8.4. As I said Windows 95 will install Thinkpad/DOS PCMCIA drivers so you can use a PCMCIA to install Windows 95. However, these drivers are not compatible with Windows 95 32 bit drivers, causing a conflict. Windows 95 has an automated method, to fix this; while this was a feature of the Windows 95 Beta, I checked my OSR2 install and it is still present. From the linked post

"If you have a ThinkPad on which the ThinkPad DOS/Windows PCMCIA
support software is already installed but want to use Windows 95
PCMCIA support software after you install Windows 95 on the
ThinkPad, follow the next steps.

1. Click "My Computer"
2. Click "Control Panel"
3. Click "PC Card"
4. Select "No" for the question "Are you using a PC card to
install Windows?"; then click "Next"
5. Select "Yes" for the question "Would you like to review the
change to your system files before Windows disable these
drivers?"; then click "Next"
6. Verify that the following statements are highlighted to be
removed from your CONFIG.SYS.

DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\IBMDSS01.SYS
DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\IBMDOSCS.SYS
DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\DICRMU01.SYS
DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\$ICPMDOS.SYS
DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\AUTODRV.SYS C:\THINKPAD\AUTODRV.INI
DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\SRAMDRV2.SYS

Click "Next"; Windows 95 also lets you review AUTOEXEC.BAT
and SYSTEM.INI. There are no ThinkPad PCMCIA support software
setup included in AUTOEXEC.BAT and SYSTEM.INI.
7. After you review all the system files, click "Finish" to
complete the Windows 95 PCMCIA support setup."

[Bondi]

Thanks for sharing this.
PCMCIA CF is the moset convenient way to transfer big files to older PCs, but it sometimes requires running around to make it work.
I recently faced a problem with PCMCIA-CF card in W98 - it just did not apperar as a drive, i.e. no additional drive letter showed up in My Computer, yet the card was listed in Control Panel\PCMCIA Devices. But the solution was easy - I had to manually type in the drive letter(the one was supposed to belong to the new drive) in the path filed, and it would show the content of the drive.

[onespeedbiker]

I had a similar problem with Windows 98SE. Turns out there is a conflict between the PCMCIA drivers and USB "Intel 82801DB(ICH4) USB2.0 Enhanced Host Controller" that comes with a Windows 98SE USB driver package. There are other packages that don't include this Controller, or you can just delete or disable it in the Device Manager and the PCMCIA will work, abet maybe slower. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=129114&p=836658&hil ... 98#p836658