USB PCMCIA card reader

[ThinkPad560X]

I bought a USB PCMCIA card reader for my IBM Aptiva, NetVista, ThinkCentre and IdeaPad S10, Wanting to use it with my IBM ThinkPad's UltraBay 2000 as it has a CD/RW/DVD-ROM Combo Drive and my 3 desktops only have a basic CD-ROM Drive and my S10 no CD Drive at all and would save me from buying internal CD Drives and such. It is a U132 Elan Digital. bought off ebay. Go under ebay and enter this item number in search: 270636598817

From what the company website says, it is only for certain WiFi cards. Witch to me is really dumb as I can get a USB WiFi or a PCI WiFi adapter witch my NetVista has the PCI. Surely there is a way to get this to read basic PCMCIA cards, Or am I reading the site wrong? the ebay selling site said for External USB Card Reader for PCMCIA PC Cards.

When ever I plug any of my cards in the light on the side of the adapter flashes green and red. I used my IBM data/fax modem card. LinkSys WiFi card and my IBM UltraBay 2000 card and same thing.

[Radioguy]

From what the company website says, it is only for certain WiFi cards. Witch to me is really dumb as I can get a USB WiFi or a PCI WiFi adapter witch my NetVista has the PCI. Surely there is a way to get this to read basic PCMCIA cards, Or am I reading the site wrong? the ebay selling site said for External USB Card Reader for PCMCIA PC Cards.

I've bought versions that only supported 16-bit cards (nice that this does 32-bit), and they couldn't handle secondary adapter cards being inserted (external devices with pcmcia cables etc), nor anything based on cardbus. I was also a bit surprised, and learned the same lesson.

As for being "dumb", this handles WWAN pc cards. That's pretty useful. Of course, the drivers are what's allowing compliance, not just the chipset. They concentrate on that area and market this for that. The seller here may be omitting this in order to dupe people, but I always research the tech before bidding these days.

There's a chance the chipset could handle the devices you want to insert with a different driver, but you have to find out what the chipset is and what it can do. Then you have to see if someone else uses it, and offers another driver that can support your devices. That may be a longshot.

[ThinkPad560X]

So this adapter can read any of my PCMCIA cards, I just need to install the drivers for the reader to read them?

[Radioguy]

I don't see where I said that. I did use the words "chance" and "longshot" prefaced on you doing some research, but as-is, you already know the answer is no.

However, I wish you luck.

[hellosailor]

I would also expect driver problems. A PCMCIA card physically interacts with a hardware bus in the computer and it can send hardware IRQ signals, etc. The USB devices can't do that, they need to emulate the hardware and send software commands instead.

That mightn't be impossible--but even simple USB serial adapters have problems with compatibility and bad driver support. Given all that a PCMCIA card could be doing...If it didn't work right out of the box, if it didn't have a certification for the OS you are using, if it didn't have support, I'd send it right back rather than try to figure out what they might have gotten right or wrong.

PCMCIA's advantage is that it can be a direct hardware interface. USB just can't do that the same way.