External PCMCIA Drive

This one has me stumped. I have been using an external PCMCIA drive successfully for months on a CE 2.11 Handheld PC. No problems transerring data to and from a 20GB drive although transfer rates are a little slow. I also used this drive from time to time on a Jornada 720 without issue in the past.

Now I have a new HPC 2000 and when I insert the drive it just spins up briefly then shuts down. I have tried this now on three HPC2000 devices, all with the same result (Sharp Telios, MP790, Jornada 720).

There is NOTHING wrong with the drive as it still works on the CE 2.11 (intermec 6651) and on a PC. in fact I have tried several different hard drives all with the same result.

Anybody have any ideas???

It would probably help if you gave more information about the drive, but in any event I suspect it's a driver problem.

HPC2000 (3.0) is only partially backwards compatible with HPC Pro (2.11). I found this out the hard way when my Addonics SCSI PCMCIA card would not work with my MobilePro 890 (880 upgraded to HPC2000) even though the specs say WinCE 2.0 (or maybe 2.1 -- I'm not at home to check) or greater. Since the unit is out of warranty -- even though I bought it new recently on eBay -- and it's US$80 per call, I decided to do without.

If you do find a solution, please post it.

Bruce
MP890 Evangelist

Is it a 5v card?

The drive is a Vipower SmartHandy enclosure with a 20GB IBM TravelStar Hard Disk installed and using a Vipower PCMCIA SmartCable (NOT CardBus). I believe the card is 5V and not 3.3V.

C-Amie, does HPC 2000 not support 5V cards? How come CE 2.11 does?!?

Like I said before I used with a Jornada 720 in the past (at least I think I did!). Incidentally, I tried connecting the optional mains power pack to the drive AND to the HPC but it still fails to get beyond a brief spin.

I never used any drivers on the CE 2.11 Intermec but I did try loading the IPAQ Storage Brick drivers (MIPS version obviously) on the MP790/Telios with no luck either.

i don't know about this case but 5V wifi cards work with hpc2000

What is an external PMCIA drive? Is it something that I could use with my Jornada 720 that has a pcmcia slot that is dead. What does it connect to?

OOH! I am embarrassed. I gues an external pcmcia hard drive is one that plugs into the pcmcia slot. Duh!

Don't worry about it. Hey this may work for you. http://www.semsons.com/comflastopcc.html

OK, my device manual doesn't specifically state the voltage of PC Cards it will accept but it seems that most cards that work can operate on both 3.3 and 5 voltages - ie, they will adjust according to the device they're connected to. I believe the voltage of the Vipower Card is 5V because it has a seperate power supply connector which is 5V (does that make sense?). Surely if the card tried to draw to much current from the PCMCIA slot the HPC itself would fail and not the drive? This seems to be backed up by the fact that drive still fails to power up properly even with the mains power supply attached. Does anybody know what voltage Toshiba's 2 and 5GB drives work at?

It should work, yes. there are known issues with older models of H/PC in that 5v cards will not work, but I would say that it should not be the issue here now you're checked it out.

On the Intermec, can you get the drive fired up and running on it. Then using a registry editor (see left hand column in support if you need one), export me HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers - to a .txt file.
I'll have a look at the driver manifest for the working device.

Damn! I only had the Regitry Editor from MS Power Toys installed and that doesn't allow exporting! I've installed TRE thanks to the link in support (is that FREEWARE?). I've attached the exported file.

Note that I have installed no drivers for the Vipower card - I just plugged in the drive and off it went. I have in the past however tried the IPAQ storage brick drivers floeting around on the internet and they seemed to work ok too on the 2.11 machine, but not on 2000.

Thanks



Attachments
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exports.reg (15KB - 74 downloads)

BTW, the attached file IS a text file but it insisted on giving it a different extension. I should have changed the ext - sorry

Of course it is freeware.

Your certain that the drive was inserted and running when you made this export?

Yep, the drive was connected and running. I opened up the drive contents in Explorer just to check everything was OK.

Did you not find an entry in the registry? Should be under PCMCIA?

Perhaps I should add that some of the software I have installed over the past few weeks has included a different copy ATADISK.DLL (or whatever it's called). I just say yes to overwrite every time I'm asked but it's never stopped the drive working.