A
Andrew Mayo
A tale of woe and suffering, possibly self-inflicted, and currently
with an unresolved ending....
The cast:-
An HP Omnibook 6000 PIII 850 laptop running Win2K
A USB2 PCMCIA card of unknown provenance (more on this later)
A Lacie external USB2 80G drive
The plot:-
My plan was simple. I'd been running various music software,
particularly a software sampler, on the laptop and apart from some
occasional crashes, it was also clear that the internal 4200rpm disk
drive wasn't really up to the task of streaming a lot of audio in real
time.
Looking at the cost of upgrading the internal drive vs an external
USB2 drive, and given that I already had a PCMCIA card with 2 USB2
ports, I decided to put a Lacie drive on the system and put the audio
samples on there. With luck, I might also be able to run up stuff like
Cubase and do audio recording to the Lacie.
First, cleanliness. On a separate partition on the internal laptop
drive, install a clean copy of Win2K pro and then upgrade to SP4. So
far, so good. Install the drivers which come with the USB2 card (uses
the Ali chipset.. did you flinch yet! Alas, innocent that I am, I had
no idea of the horror, the horror that was to come!)
Ok. Looks good. Can see the drive. Format drive to NTFS, selecting
full format rather than quick.... looks good.... oops 'format couldn't
be completed' at the point that format reaches 100%. Hmm. Event log
indicates controller error.
Look on the internet. As Verity Stob (qv) says 'many have wondered but
no-one knows' (cf: her wonderful article on cruft, the removal of
which was the prime aim of this clean install). Sigh!.
Put drive on USB1.1 connector built into the laptop (Intel chipset).
Format again. Works. Ok, maybe it's a glitch. Swap back to USB2 port.
Start installing software 'The write operation could not be
completed'. More controller errors in the event log. Chkdsk indicates
corruption... arrggh.
Take Lacie drive to work and plug into new IBM machine running XP SP1
and with USB2 ports. Thrash living daylights out of drive, which works
perfectly.
Ok. Must be the damn USB2 card. Now, what brand is it?. Hmm, nothing
on the card at all.... and of course, being PCMCIA, all the chips are
locked away inside the metal case. Well, uses Ali chipset.... do some
digging around... some people sell it as a 'Newlink' card.... but
there's no such company on the net.... search for all possible
combinations of drivers and card vendors.... go to ali's web site,
which is total crap..... finally find another site pointing to
ftp.aliusa.com, from which I locate a driver install version 1.57.
Hmm, well the CDROM I got with the card only had version 1.44, so
probably this'll fix it..... go home, install. Get messagebox 'You
have an inbox PCMCIA card. Install anyway'. er, yes, I suppose....
Problems a bit better but still intermittent controller errors.... no
chkdsk problems, now.... Hmm, turn off write caching... seems to
largely cure the problem BUT.... unmount/remount drive and .... write
caching is turned back ON!.
Back on the net. Was that 'inbox' thing a clue... nope, nobody called
'inbox'. (yes, Virginia, I did search the registry, darned if I can
find any kind of vendor string for the damn thing at all...). Now,
about that write caching. Maybe I can permanently disable it.
Microsoft say 'oh, sorry but the drive has to remember the cache
settings'.. pardon!. Isn't the OS supposed to allow me to set this up
in the registry... sigh!.
Plan B. Have heard that APM works better than ACPI for USB (and for
music apps). Now this smells superstitious to me, apart from strange
idea of installing obsolete power management HAL, but hey, dig out
Win2K, do an overwrite (upgrade) install... press the undocumented F5
key to get the 'standard PC' option... install, check device
manager... yes, standard PC.
Now, install SP4.... bam! BSOD ... you have violated your license
agreement. Product tampering detected... eh!. arrghhhh
The final act:-
to take place tonight
1. Try XP (SP1) instead. Can't be any worse.
2. Try fresh APM install, blowing away partition first. But will SP4
work? Or will it think I'm fiddling with its license agreement and
BSOD on me.
3. Buy another PCMCIA card, this time with the official 'pope-blessed'
NEC chipset, which apparently will work with Microsoft's drivers under
SP4 directly... if I understand what I've read so far!
Conclusion:
USB2 still bleeding edge. Beware Taiwanese vendors bearing gifts. Ok,
it was cheap, but the wasted time.... yaarrggh. A pox on vendors who
(a) don't label their products and then (b) onsell them to so many
other resellers that you can't find out who *really* makes them and
(c) don't provide drivers somewhere you can easily download them. This
is the second time I've been burnt recently; the last time it was an
internal modem whose chipset just *wouldn't* work - fortunately,
that's a cheap mistake.
And Microsoft. Umm, excuse me, but write caching is NOT something I
expect to be persisted at drive level. Will you PLEASE fix Win2K/XP so
that it can be GLOBALLY disabled in the REGISTRY!.
(does anyone know how to do this programmatically; I could presumably
run something at boot time to force this, perhaps).
The trouble, as I said, with PCMCIA cards is that unlike most 'Very
Damn Fine Computer Product' cards, made by anonymous Taiwanese
vendors, you can't just take the chip numbers and go look for drivers
(unless you have Kryptonite Vision, or a destructive urge, of course).
Also Ali's web site is very poor. Choose a product from the drop-down
list.... M3245, M3265 etc. Ali, I don't know what damn product it is!.
Its a goddam PCMCIA card with one of your chips in there but I don't
have an X-Ray machine!. It does USB stuff!. Would it kill you to
provide a bit more help!.
I'm really starting to go off 'off-brand' products, I have to say.
Having said that, sometimes you pay through the nose for branded
products which are just the same thing rebranded. It's time someone
rated various vendors for support, particularly the provision of
drivers.
PS: Lacie product very nice, vendor's web site very perfunctory, and
disorganised. Big mystery to me; drive controller must have firmware
to do its task but there's no downloads for firmware upgrades etc...
wonder if you're stuck with whatever rev. you buy. Console myself that
it *seems* to work on other machine....
PPS: Since the PCMCIA card only cost twenty quid I'm only down in
time. But now I have to find one with the magic Microsoft-blessed NEC
chipset. I've had these dialogues before....
Me: (picks up brightly coloured box which says 'Very Damn Fine PCMCIA
USB2 card. Blindingly fast, fully certified' and has picture of card
on front of box and 'system requirements Pentium III 500 or
greater'... and that's it.
Me (to pimply-faced shop assistant): Does this card use the NEC
chipset?
PFSA: dunno (stands there with blank look on face)
Me to PFSA (gently but firmly): can we find out?
PFSA: (asks boss)... much animated conversation, often in another
language (Tottenham Court Rd, remember!).
PFSA: dunno... do you wanna buy it, anyway?. The boss says it's really
good.
with an unresolved ending....
The cast:-
An HP Omnibook 6000 PIII 850 laptop running Win2K
A USB2 PCMCIA card of unknown provenance (more on this later)
A Lacie external USB2 80G drive
The plot:-
My plan was simple. I'd been running various music software,
particularly a software sampler, on the laptop and apart from some
occasional crashes, it was also clear that the internal 4200rpm disk
drive wasn't really up to the task of streaming a lot of audio in real
time.
Looking at the cost of upgrading the internal drive vs an external
USB2 drive, and given that I already had a PCMCIA card with 2 USB2
ports, I decided to put a Lacie drive on the system and put the audio
samples on there. With luck, I might also be able to run up stuff like
Cubase and do audio recording to the Lacie.
First, cleanliness. On a separate partition on the internal laptop
drive, install a clean copy of Win2K pro and then upgrade to SP4. So
far, so good. Install the drivers which come with the USB2 card (uses
the Ali chipset.. did you flinch yet! Alas, innocent that I am, I had
no idea of the horror, the horror that was to come!)
Ok. Looks good. Can see the drive. Format drive to NTFS, selecting
full format rather than quick.... looks good.... oops 'format couldn't
be completed' at the point that format reaches 100%. Hmm. Event log
indicates controller error.
Look on the internet. As Verity Stob (qv) says 'many have wondered but
no-one knows' (cf: her wonderful article on cruft, the removal of
which was the prime aim of this clean install). Sigh!.
Put drive on USB1.1 connector built into the laptop (Intel chipset).
Format again. Works. Ok, maybe it's a glitch. Swap back to USB2 port.
Start installing software 'The write operation could not be
completed'. More controller errors in the event log. Chkdsk indicates
corruption... arrggh.
Take Lacie drive to work and plug into new IBM machine running XP SP1
and with USB2 ports. Thrash living daylights out of drive, which works
perfectly.
Ok. Must be the damn USB2 card. Now, what brand is it?. Hmm, nothing
on the card at all.... and of course, being PCMCIA, all the chips are
locked away inside the metal case. Well, uses Ali chipset.... do some
digging around... some people sell it as a 'Newlink' card.... but
there's no such company on the net.... search for all possible
combinations of drivers and card vendors.... go to ali's web site,
which is total crap..... finally find another site pointing to
ftp.aliusa.com, from which I locate a driver install version 1.57.
Hmm, well the CDROM I got with the card only had version 1.44, so
probably this'll fix it..... go home, install. Get messagebox 'You
have an inbox PCMCIA card. Install anyway'. er, yes, I suppose....
Problems a bit better but still intermittent controller errors.... no
chkdsk problems, now.... Hmm, turn off write caching... seems to
largely cure the problem BUT.... unmount/remount drive and .... write
caching is turned back ON!.
Back on the net. Was that 'inbox' thing a clue... nope, nobody called
'inbox'. (yes, Virginia, I did search the registry, darned if I can
find any kind of vendor string for the damn thing at all...). Now,
about that write caching. Maybe I can permanently disable it.
Microsoft say 'oh, sorry but the drive has to remember the cache
settings'.. pardon!. Isn't the OS supposed to allow me to set this up
in the registry... sigh!.
Plan B. Have heard that APM works better than ACPI for USB (and for
music apps). Now this smells superstitious to me, apart from strange
idea of installing obsolete power management HAL, but hey, dig out
Win2K, do an overwrite (upgrade) install... press the undocumented F5
key to get the 'standard PC' option... install, check device
manager... yes, standard PC.
Now, install SP4.... bam! BSOD ... you have violated your license
agreement. Product tampering detected... eh!. arrghhhh
The final act:-
to take place tonight
1. Try XP (SP1) instead. Can't be any worse.
2. Try fresh APM install, blowing away partition first. But will SP4
work? Or will it think I'm fiddling with its license agreement and
BSOD on me.
3. Buy another PCMCIA card, this time with the official 'pope-blessed'
NEC chipset, which apparently will work with Microsoft's drivers under
SP4 directly... if I understand what I've read so far!
Conclusion:
USB2 still bleeding edge. Beware Taiwanese vendors bearing gifts. Ok,
it was cheap, but the wasted time.... yaarrggh. A pox on vendors who
(a) don't label their products and then (b) onsell them to so many
other resellers that you can't find out who *really* makes them and
(c) don't provide drivers somewhere you can easily download them. This
is the second time I've been burnt recently; the last time it was an
internal modem whose chipset just *wouldn't* work - fortunately,
that's a cheap mistake.
And Microsoft. Umm, excuse me, but write caching is NOT something I
expect to be persisted at drive level. Will you PLEASE fix Win2K/XP so
that it can be GLOBALLY disabled in the REGISTRY!.
(does anyone know how to do this programmatically; I could presumably
run something at boot time to force this, perhaps).
The trouble, as I said, with PCMCIA cards is that unlike most 'Very
Damn Fine Computer Product' cards, made by anonymous Taiwanese
vendors, you can't just take the chip numbers and go look for drivers
(unless you have Kryptonite Vision, or a destructive urge, of course).
Also Ali's web site is very poor. Choose a product from the drop-down
list.... M3245, M3265 etc. Ali, I don't know what damn product it is!.
Its a goddam PCMCIA card with one of your chips in there but I don't
have an X-Ray machine!. It does USB stuff!. Would it kill you to
provide a bit more help!.
I'm really starting to go off 'off-brand' products, I have to say.
Having said that, sometimes you pay through the nose for branded
products which are just the same thing rebranded. It's time someone
rated various vendors for support, particularly the provision of
drivers.
PS: Lacie product very nice, vendor's web site very perfunctory, and
disorganised. Big mystery to me; drive controller must have firmware
to do its task but there's no downloads for firmware upgrades etc...
wonder if you're stuck with whatever rev. you buy. Console myself that
it *seems* to work on other machine....
PPS: Since the PCMCIA card only cost twenty quid I'm only down in
time. But now I have to find one with the magic Microsoft-blessed NEC
chipset. I've had these dialogues before....
Me: (picks up brightly coloured box which says 'Very Damn Fine PCMCIA
USB2 card. Blindingly fast, fully certified' and has picture of card
on front of box and 'system requirements Pentium III 500 or
greater'... and that's it.
Me (to pimply-faced shop assistant): Does this card use the NEC
chipset?
PFSA: dunno (stands there with blank look on face)
Me to PFSA (gently but firmly): can we find out?
PFSA: (asks boss)... much animated conversation, often in another
language (Tottenham Court Rd, remember!).
PFSA: dunno... do you wanna buy it, anyway?. The boss says it's really
good.