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Papyrus Computer Technologies Ltd.
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PCI PCMCIA Drives FAQ
The drivers support the following operating systems :
Installation Procedure YOU MUST INSTALL FIRST THE DRIVER SOFTWARE FOR DRIVE TO WORK! Before you install the hardware, you should install the software drivers. This is so that Windows does not recognize the hardware and install it's own drivers that do not work with hardware. Once you have installed the drivers, you should power down and insert the hardware, then re-start your PC. As Windows re-starts, you should see the "New hardware Wizard" detect the hardware and may be prompted for the Windows disks, just follow the on-screen instructions. At the end of this process, you should be asked to re-boot the machine. If Windows boots straight to the normal desktop, and you have not been instructed to re-boot your PC, you should do so now. Once you have re-booted the PC, you can check the PC-Card adapter is installed correctly by double clicking on the "PC-Card (PCMCIA)" icon in the control panel (not Windows 2000). The number of PC-Card slots you have should be displayed, you should then be able to insert a PC-Card and information about the card should be displayed in this dialog box. In Windows 2000, Windows Me and Windows 9x, when you insert a PC-Card, an icon should appear next to the clock in the task bar, you can double click on this icon to see the same details about the PC-Card etc. To use the front drive (designed for 3 1/2 inch front bay) in a 5 1/2 inch bay you have to buy an adaptor that fits around the drive so that it fits into the larger slot. These are available from "all good computer stores". The Read/Write PCI Drive will run with any true compatible Pentium PC or higher with PCI Bus. Beware! - you cannot use your unit in a laptop; The drivers are designed to operate with specially designed PCI based PC-Card drives on add-in boards for desktop PC's. You should NOT install the drivers on any other hardware platform, THEY WILL NOT WORK! How do I connect the cables on my Drive Adaptor? The ribbon cables are paired for each socket, so you should have been supplied with four ribbon cables. Notice that each of the ribbon cables is marked with a red conductor which indicates pin one, and that two of the ribbon cables have polarizing inserts so that it is not possible to cross-connect the ribbon cables. A pair of cables for one socket is made up of one ribbon cable with polarizing inserts and one without. Make sure you line up each ribbon cable so that the red conductor lines up with pin 1. On some motherboards, the primary PCI bus (BUS 0) may not be available on the
expansion slots (e.g. motherboards with the Intel 810/840 chipset). Instead, the
expansion bus slots are behind a PCI-to-PCI Bridge and appear as Bus number 1 or
higher. Operating problems with the Intel D815EEA motherboard In our test labs, a number of operating problems have been detected with the Intel D815EEA motherboard in all operating systems. To fix these problems, we recommend that the latest BIOS is installed from the Intel website at: http://developer.intel.com/design/motherbd/ea/ea_bios.htm
___________________________________________________________ Problems in Windows 95, 98 and Millennium Edition For best operation, it is recommended that PCI IRQ routing be enabled. On some motherboards, Windows fails to enable PCI IRQ routing correctly. In this situation, it may be necessary to force the Windows PCI Bus driver to use BIOS calls in order to route PCI interrupts correctly. This is can be done via Control Panel/System/Device Manager/System devices/PCI bus. For best operation of an PCI/PCMCIA drive in Windows 95 and 98, it is recommended that PCI IRQ routing be enabled. The following screen-shots are from Windows 95, but the procedure is just the same in 98.
To do this, go to Control Panel/System/Device Manager/System devices/PCI bus...
...and click on 'properties'. Then click on the IRQ steering tab, and check the boxes to use IRQ steering :
You can check the results in the IRQ Routing Status panel. Using BIOS calls. On some motherboards, Windows fails to enable PCI IRQ routing correctly with direct hardware calls. In this situation, it may be necessary to force the Windows PCI Bus driver to use BIOS calls in order to route PCI interrupts correctly. This is can be done via Control Panel/System/Device Manager/System devices/PCI bus/properties (see above) Click on the settings tab and check the "Use Bios" button as below: Note: Take care not to check the Override bridges box as this can cause problems. Operating problems with Intel(R) Desktop Board D815EEA in Windows 98 When "Intel(R) Active Monitor" is installed, Windows 98 crashes with a page fault when a PC-Card is inserted. At the same time, "Active Monitor" may report an voltage out of range error. The Intel(R) D815EEA Desktop board is an i815e based motherboard with integrated VGA, USB, Sound and LAN. By default, all the IRQ's on this motherboard are fully allocated, so when a PC-Card is inserted that requires an IRQ, Windows must re-balance the allocation of resources in order to allocate an IRQ to the PC-Card. The problem is due to the drivers for the "Active Monitor" program which are not able to cope with a re-balance of resources, so when Windows performs a re-balance, the system crashes. Solution: Un-install the "Intel(R) Active Monitor" program. Contact Intel for an update to the program. Windows 95 OSR2 (B/C) fails to allocate resources to the PC-Card The PC-Card is recognized by the operating system, but it fails to automatically allocate any resources to it, even though the resources may be available and a yellow exclamation(!) mark appears over the PC-Card in the Device Manager. More Information: Windows 95 uses the BIOS IRQ routing table for IRQ
routing information. As some modern motherboards do not have ISA bus slots, ISA
bus interrupts are not "available". This poses a problem with routing an "ISA
style" IRQ to a 16-bit PC-Card in a PCI based PC-Card adapter. Solution: First of all, check PCI IRQ routing is enabled and working
correctly (see "PCI IRQ routing in Windows 9x"). Then you must manually assign
all the resources to the PC-Card. If your PC has no spare IRQ's available, the
trick is to assign an IRQ assigned to a PCI device (one marked "IRQ holder for
PCI steering"). This will force Windows to move the IRQ for the PCI device onto
another IRQ (PCI devices can share IRQ's with other PCI peripherals). When I insert my PCMCIA card, my PC takes over 60 seconds to recognize it! When a PCMCIA card is inserted in a PC running Windows 9x/Me, with a PCI Network card, but the PC is not connected to a network, it can take over 60 seconds for the operating system to recognize the card. During this time, the PC/mouse will freeze intermittently. More information: When a PC has a PCI (or integrated) network card
installed, by default Windows will configure the network card for a DHCP server
to configure it's IP address etc. When the drivers for the network card are
started, if this network card is not physically connected to a network, the DHCP
client software will wait until the timeout period has expired (approx. 60
seconds) before allowing the PC to continue. During this process, the PC will
not respond to mouse and keyboard actions. Solution: Either disable the network card in the device manager, or in TCP/IP settings for the network, disable DHCP and manually assign a fixed IP address to the network adapter.
___________________________________________________________ Problems in Windows NT4 and 2000 SystemSoft CardWizard for NT4 The drivers are designed to work with both the standard Windows NT support
for PCMCIA cards and third party Card & Socket services utilities. We tested SystemSoft Card Wizard (a third party card and socket services package) and found that it resolves the above problems and limitations, and for this reason, Elan recommends that Card Wizard is installed on systems running Windows NT4 (see http://www.systemsoft.com for more information) or please use this link in you wish to contact our support department. Windows 2000 locks up after installation of hardware It has been reported that on some PC's after following the installation instructions and inserting the P-Series hardware after installation of the drivers, the PC may lock up during boot. We are currently working on a fix to this problem which will be released in the next issue (version 5.01+) of the drivers. If you have this problem, apply the following work around...
More information : This problem only occurs during the first time the P-Series hardware is detected by Windows 2000. Once Windows 2000 has booted correctly with the PCMCIA hardware installed, the problem never re-occurs. Multiprocessor Machines (SMP) Currently the PSeries drivers cannot fully support multi-processor operation when used with CardBus adapters. More information: In a multi-processor PC, Windows NT & 2000 uses the
IOAPIC to assign interrupts from the PCI bus, based on information provided by
the BIOS. CL6729 based adapter on the MSI 694D Pro motherboard in Windows NT4 (uniprocessor kernel) The standard Microsoft PCMCIA driver does not work with this motherboard, so a third party Card & Socket services utility must be installed. More information : On this motherboard, during boot, the system BIOS
correctly allocates an IO base address of 0xDC00 to the CL6729 controller, the
PSeries driver correctly loads and is able to use this address to identify the
adapter. At this point the CL6729 controller can be seen by any drivers
attempting to use the IO address assigned to the adapter so there should be no
problem, but.... Get around : SystemSoft CardWizard 5.2 has been
tested with this motherboard and can be made to work with the BIOS PCI IRQ
allocation set so that all PCI devices share IRQ 10. Problems Using a Modem in Windows 2000 +SP1 on an Intel 815e based motherboard. There would appear to be a bug in the allocation of IO resources behind the PCI-PCI bridge on an 815e motherboard. The device properties report that the modem is not working because of an error "code 10". Modem PC-Cards are usually assigned resources based on standard COM ports. This seems to be a problem on the i815 motherboard as the PC-Card adapter is the other side of a PCI-PCI bridge. Microsoft are working on a fix for this problem that will feature in SP3. Get-around for "Standard PCMCIA Modem": Manually assign the resources using "basic configuration option 0004" (on my modem this is any IO, any IRQ, you may have to experiment with other configuration options that will allow you to change settings). Then assign a fixed IO address in the same range of IO addresses claimed by the second PCI bus (This range is above 0xD00 on my Intel D815EEA motherboard), and any available IRQ. I used 0xDFF0 and IRQ 10, the modem then will work. More information (including pictures - approx 70KB) Get-around for AT&T KeepInTouch PC-Card Modem: On a Dell Dimension 4100S motherboard with i815e chipset this problem has been observed, but it may also occur on other motherboards with this modem card. Download the
icmodem.inf file and install it in the following way: This fix could also be applied to other modems, but the inf file will require manual editing to match your particular modem. Refer to your modem manufacturer for further information. |
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