Psion cards on Thinkpads

[EuanPirie]

This is doing my nut in! We have a few IBM Thinkpad 570 running NT. We are trying to install a Psion Gold Card Netglobal 10/100 MB Ethernet with 56K modem. It is a cardbus card. To say we are having problems is like saying Titanic hit a small rock.<br><br>The modem will install on a clean NT 4 workstation fine. The lan card will not. The Lan card only seems to work using Card Wizard 4. However, the modem will not work while using this.<br><br>I have tried COM settings, IRQ, even registry fixes. Psion are not a huge help (they have sent the same fix twice!) and I am going mad. Has anybody managed to get these things to work? Psion claim it is easy, with their instructions (tried that, 3 times) but it isn't.<br><br>Will try anything (sounds like a dodgy advert...), as I am at my wits end.

 

[Ianco]

Is the Thinkpad cardbus or pcmia?&nbsp;&nbsp;I don't know too much about these things, but apparently the older notebooks are PCMIA but <b>NOT</b> Cardbus.&nbsp;&nbsp;Unfortunately, the Cardbus cards fit into the PCMIA slots just fine, thank you, but getting them to work is near impossible!<br>Just a thought.<br> <p>Ian Cowie<br><a href=mailto:ianco@email.com>ianco@email.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>"If you see something THIS big, with eight legs, coming your way, let me know. I have to kill it before it develops language skills." - Londo, Babylon 5 <br>
Anyhow, how can I help you, eh?

 

[EuanPirie]

The laptop has a Cardbus slot. (yes, the card is in it!)<br><br>As a side issue to the same problem, how can I get a user defined COM port (COM 5) to appear in the listing for a Modem install? I have set it up (Card wizard needs this configuration with this card), but when I install the modem, the COM port is not listed!<br><br>Any ideas, people?

 

[dxd]

Well, there are several issues dealing with Cardbus support in Windows NT. First, Windows NT does not natively support Cardbus adapters. Most vendors include a 3rd Party application, CardWizard, CardExec, CardWare...to allow support for Cardbus devices. However, these same devices must have support in them to work with the 3rd Party software. Some work with CardWizard others with CardWare.<br><br>If Psion indicates their drivers work with CardWizard or in fact need 3rd Party Cardbus support then you must use it. Other vendors, like 3Com provide Cardbus support in their point enabler so a 3rd Party app is not necessary.<br><br>To get down to the issue, the Cardbus adapter should use the same IRQ as the PCI Bus. In fact, the resources used for the card should come from the PCI resource pool. In my experience, combo cards generally use 1 IRQ, several I/O ports and one or more memory ranges. I have always installed the lan portion of the adapter first and the modem last and have had good results.<br><br>If you have not done so already, disable the integrated Infrared port...I see articles all the time saying this device poses configuration problems. Make sure Psion drivers support CardWizard. Verify whether Psion requires a 3rd Party app to support Cardbus in NT. If not, don't use one. It should be a heck of a lot easier to configure without.

 

[EuanPirie]

Psion reckon the card will install without the Cardwizard. Yes, it does, but it does not work. The Lan card will install fine, but refuses to see anything. The modem installs fine and works a treat without the card wizard (to an extent, there are some COM settings to change here and there).<br><br>I have had conflicting info from Psion on this - 1 says it will work fine without Cardwizard. The other says you must use it and a registry fix. I'm a bit fed up of them to be honest.<br><br>The infrared port is disabled as default on the install.

 

[EuanPirie]

To draw this one to a conclusion, the cards have been returned as they do not work on this model of Thinkpad. a collegue has mentioned that she had the same problem with some other Psion cards, and used new drivers to make it work. However I am using the latest drivers.<br><br>So basically, if you have these cards and this laptop, don't bank on getting it working in the near future!