For some reason, when I got my HP laptop a few years ago, I neglected to check about its USB capabilities. So I only have two USB ports, and they are the slow-as-hell 1.0 or 1.1 stuff.
I have to hook up things like extenal audio interfaces, extenal harddrives, and my IPOD thru my slow USB using a USB hub because i dont have enough ports. I store all my songs on my extenal hard drive because there’s no room for it on my internal one. Do you know how long it takes me to update my IPOD?
Anyways, so I thought, maybe I could get high speed 2.0 USB on my PCMCIA slot on my laptop. And indeed I did buy a few of those cards. But they didn’t work, because of some power restriction that the PCMCIA slot has. So I bought one of those PCMCIA cards that gets its power from the USB or another extenal source. That didn’t work either…by “not working” i mean like…it either goes slower than my normal 1.0 ports, or that the only device that works is my mouse. Even my USB flash drives hardly worked in those things.
Anyways, does anyone know of any solutions that are really gonna work? I have a variety of USB devices, so Is there any way I can get fast USB speed that works for everything? Or is it hopeless?
Well… if the notebook is really so old it doesn’t do 2.0 I would suspect that the slow transfer issue isn’t necessarily entirely related to USB 1.1 limitations. Having said this, the simplest solution is simply to get aUSB 2.0 mini hub (often on sale) that has it’s on power supply and would plug into your 2.0 PCMCIA/PCCARD card. I use the one linked on my notebook.
One thing confuses me. You keep using the term “PCMCIA” slot which is an older 16 bit interface and there was never (AFAIK) a USB card of any kind, 1.1 or 2.0, made for this interface due to hardware limitations. I suspect you have a PCCARD slot. The lack of power is a msytery also as I have never had a power limitations on my PCCARD USB 2.0 adapter on my home unit and I’ve got all kids of crap hanging off of it.
Umm… in re-reading just to clarify the OP. Are you saying the PCCARD USB 2.0 adapter wouldn’t fit properly in the PCMCIA/PCCARD slot, or that they a fit fine, but just didn’t work correctly?
Secondly if you;re plugging a powered 2.0 hub inot into a USB 1.1 interface the fastest it’s ever going to go is 1.1.
You need to determine if your PCCARD slot is “CARDBUS” compliant. If so, then modern (32 bit) cards will work. Otherwise, you need an old 16 bit card, which you will have to be extreamly lucky to find…per earlier posting, USB may never have existed for this, and certainly not USB 2.0.
The laptop cards that I bought all fit, but they did not work correctly. Sometimes they would say stuff like “not enough power to use device” and sometimes it would just crash and all sorts of other general erroring. I have gotten devices like mice to work…not that that thats really useful in terms of 2.0 speed…
I third the fact that a 2.0 USB hub will NOT work.
As for this whole cardbus/PCMCIA stuff…I’m not entirely sure what kindof or type of cardbus i have. I never really understanded that terminology. How can I find out what kindof cardbus/pcmcia slot I have? All i know is, I’ve never had problems of stuff not fitting into it. I have used this and its worked fine for me
Some more info: The first card I bought was this one …notice the comments people leaving on how it doesnt provide enough power.
The second one I got off of ebay, and was basically the same, but came with a cable that linked my USB port to the PCMCIA card to power it. didnt work any better.
Aha! The problem is with the power drain on the system as a whole - USB is supposed to be able to deliver 500mA, but some systems, especially laptops, seem to hold back from allowing this. Bonding the earth and +5v lines on the USB to the USB2 card (which is what your special cable does) won’t work if the system, as a whole, doesn’t like delivering full-USB-spec current.
An independently-powered external USB2 hub, plugged into the USB2 port on your PC card should do it, the other thing that should work would be to use your bonding cable to draw power from an entirely different machine, such as a desktop computer - not as risky as it sounds(and actually is a recommended configuration on the bonding cable I have), since both ground and +ve lines are linked.
For the record, I’m certain astro was NOT under the false impression that plugging a 2.0 hub into a 1.1 port would improve the speed; I’m sure he’s suggesting plugging a 2.0 externally powered hub into the PCMCIA USB2.0 card, purely to overcome the power limitations.
HP is notorious for underpowered USB ports. I spend 3 hours futzing with a webcam that I never did work, even returned the camera once thinking it was the camera since everything else seemed to work.
I think it’s about your best shot. It’s probably worth trying to get the latest drivers for the PCMCIA card too, and making sure that Windows itself is up-to-date on all patches/service packs etc from Windows Update.