Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 10:44:21 +1100 From: Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] External USB 2 Hard Drive L100CT
Power issues can be *really* tricky with PCMCIA USB cards ... I've had the same problem myself with a USB2.0/FireWire combo card (in the hard drives I've tried, you can identify power problems by hearing regular clicks from the hard drive when you first plug it in). My solution was to take power directly from one of the motherboard 5V rails. It was somewhat easier for me because I had already brought this out when I put external PS/2 ports on my Libretto (see www.raybot.net and follow the Libretto PS/2 link). I suspect this place is slightly different to where the PS/2 ports on the PR/EPR come from - I've been able to draw more current from here than the EPR (of course, this could also mean that the EPR has additional buffering or protection on the power rail or something ...) An alternative, albeit somewhat less elegant, is to see if you can possibly rig up a battery pack (4x1.2V AA NiMH cells will give you 4.8 volts - the fussiest laptop hard drive I've got will run at down to 4.6 volts before it starts croaking).
Note that an external power supply may cause you other problems. I've got a 3.5" HDD case (albeit a cheap one), the power supply on it is so noisy that when I use it with my Portege (using the Portege's own USB port), I've got to unplug the laptop's power supply (if I have both the laptop and HDD case power supplies plugged in, even to the same powerstrip, I get a pile of read errors)! This problem also occurs on some desktops I've tried it on. I'm guessing there's a grounding problem somewhere ...
- Raymond
At 02:18 PM 15/02/2005 -0800, you wrote:
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 14:18:38 -0500 From: "Tony Oresteen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: External USB 2 Hard Drive L100CT
I've been trying to get my external 40 gig USB 2.0 Datastor hard drive by Pocketec (www.pocketec.net) to work with my L100CT. Lots of problems!
The first thing to add was a USB 2.0 PCMCIA PC Card. I found one on ebay for about $7 plus postage. It uses the NEC chip. (look at ebay item 6744246898; that's the one I bought).
The USB adapter was an easy install. Using a USB FLASH hard drive (JumpDrive, Pin Drive etc) proved that the USB card was working fine. I then plugged in the Datastor 40 gig hard drive. Nothing. L100CT did not show the drive. Then I realized why. The HD was formated NTFS, the L100CT is running Windows 98. So I downloaded a utility that lets Win98 read NTFS parttions, loaded it and rebooted everything. Still nothing. After 45 minutes I stopped trying to get the utility to work.
Last night I re-formated the Datastor into 2 Fat32 drives. The drive reads fine on my destop machine (Windows 2000).
Plugged it into the L100CT. Nothing.
I decieded that there wasn't enought power coming from the PC card so I hooked up the USB power cord that draws power from the PS2 port. No help. Still nothing.
Called Pocketec tech support. We plugged the drive into the USB 1.1 port on the L100CT docking station. All drives show fine!!
The problem is the power from the PC Card. Even with a boost from the PS port still not enough power. Recomended solution is to get the AC adapter for the Pocketec hard drive. Guess what? The AC adapter is out of stock! So I have to wait a couple of weeks.
I think that once I get the AC adapter it should work at USB 2.0 speeds. Right now it will work at USB 1.1 but it is SLOW!
Anyone else hook up a USB 2.0 hard drive to the L100CT/L110CT?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tony Oresteen Montverde, FL
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