So I have a standard USB memory card reader. It works fine except that because it derives its power from the USB bus, it can’t read any cards that require a lot of amperage – like Microdrives. So I went and bought this el-cheapo ByteCC “All-in-1” card reader on the strength that it plugs right on to the motherboard’s USB headers. That way it gets a power source all to itself instead of sharing one off another bus, right? Good.
So I installed it and it reads my microdrive just fine – cool.
But then I tried to use an SD card in it. It read fine. I tried to write something to it. It failed.
No, that’s not quite right. It didn’t just fail. There just doesn’t seem to be enough drama in simple failure. No, this failed epically. It seized Windows by the throat as it tried to do whatever the hell it was trying to do, and the only way I could get it to stop was to remove the card, as it was clear it was going to sit there doing nothing and occupying 100% of Windows Explorer’s process time in perpetuity until I did. And what happened when I removed the card? It was destroyed. Not wiped clean. Not corrupted. Stone fucking dead. Unreadable. Unformattable. Pining for the fjords. None of my devices can make heads or tails of it anymore: PDA, Treo 650, Treo 680, digital camera, my original card reader – I might as well be trying to jam a wedge of cheese in the slot for all they care
And that wasn’t the first card. No, I bought a MicroSD trio pack that came with a miniSD and standard SD card adapter specifically for my Treo 750 (the only device I have that takes miniSD, and the MicroSD 3-in-1 was a good deal). This new card reader ate that one, too. It did this one first – it’s the first card I tried in the reader, since I bough them together and I wanted to set up my new phone with some goodies on the card. When that card failed I had initially chalked it up to a bad card. Now I know better.
Really? I just assumed Japan, but there’s absolutely no information anywhere on the packaging about where it was made. But then, packaging is the biggest pile of useless I’ve ever seen for a piece of electronics. The hardware installation instructions? They were printed on the back in three easy-to-follow, two-inch images:
Image 1 shows the unit being slipped into a 3.5" drive bay in the front of a tower case. So far so good.
Image 2 shows a distance shot of a motherboard inside a case with a bunch of wires going all the hell over the place, some of which I presume belong to this device.
Image 3 shows the front of the tower case again with the unit all nice and flush with the other drives in the tower.
In actual fact, only the second image had any pertinent instructions, and that amounted to showing me a solitary picture of a bunch of ingredients spread out on a counter and saying, “Step 2: Make this into a cake.” Did I mention they were only images? No text. It’s like following the assembly instructions for an Ikea flat-pack desk if they condensed the entire sequence of events down to a picture of the finished desk.
I had to Google how to hook it up because the USB plug attached to it is 4-pins that are supposed to be plugged onto a USB header – which has 7 pins. Little did I know you only plug it into the top 4 pins.
Oh, it came with a CD. With instructions for installing the USB drivers. For twelve different products. For Windows 98. Only they don’t mention it’s only for Windows 98; I only know this because Windows 98 needs USB drivers and XP does not. No links to their website though. Or contact information of any kind.
Jeezus… I thought “Made in Japan” stopped being a bad thing sometime back in the 1970’s
About the time the US stopped making TVs and VCRs and stuff. And cars that worked. Then Korea Then the RoC (Taiwan) Then Malaysia/ SE Asia
*Or probably * some cheapass somewhere in Mainland China.
Of all possible ways to describe the product in the thread title, why did you choose to use the country of origin? Especially since you didn’t even know where that was?
Yes, I was wrong to assume that it came from Japan, and I apologize for the assumption. If anything it was more from the idea that most mass market electronics come from Japan, being that while (South?) Korea does have a pretty impressive tech industry, a lot of the cool stuff never makes it out of the country.
Not that this particular objet d’arse qualifies as cool (though it would have been handy if it worked) but still…
Well, y’see, in a not totally unexpected twist… Japan has been outsourcing, anyway (Some lower-end models of Nikon and other Japanese camera brands are really all rebadged Chinese from the same plants). Heck, by now even anime gets offshored. Anyone’s bet as for real source of crapware.