PCMCIA Series 2 card locks my laptop up when I try to install it

[dackoo]

I have two NI PCMCIA-FBUS/2 Series 2 cards that I purchased in June 2006. Unfortunately when I attempt to install it on either of my Sony Laptops one with XP Pro and the other with Windows 2000, it causes the machine to lock up/hang. I have Ni Configurator and Comms Manager ver 3.1.1 loaded onto both machines. Does anyone have a similar problem and maybe a solution. Note the laptops are different models and about 3-4 yrs old. One laptop has a Ricoh PCMCIA controller.

Thanks

[fieldbus]

Thanks for reporting.

We just tested the PCMCIA-FBUS Series 2 card with an old SONY VAIO PCG 505 laptop, which has Ricoh R5C475II cardbus controller. The result is the same: the system hangs. So it must be a hardware compatibility issue.

But we don't have a good solution for this compatibility issue currently; please try to avoid using Sony laptops with PCMCIA-FBUS Series 2 card.

For the new laptops, we suggest the new model laptops having Cardbus controller of Texas Instruments, Toshiba, O2Micro or ENE instead of Ricoh. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[tgb-beck]

We have observed the same behavior using a Dell Latitude laptop running Windows XP.  Basically

only a full power cycle will restore the system-- until the next lockup.

[fieldbus]

This is the same hardware compatibility problem. Actually, PCMCIA-FBUS Series 2 cannot work with some particular laptops. The key point is what kind of Cardbus (PCMCIA) Controller is adopted in the laptop. According to our test, the only problem is caused by Ricoh Cardbus controller and several O2Micro ones, but the controllers of Texas Instruments, Toshiba, ENE should work well with our PCMCIA-FBUS S2 card.

Please have a try if you have Series 1 card in hand, it should work well with your laptop. It's simple to tell the 2 series by their labels:
-- Series 1: PCMCIA-FBUS
-- Series 2: NI PCMCIA-FBUS Series 2

If you don't have the S1 card, I would like to suggest you try another laptop whose Cardbus Controller is from TI or Toshiba.

To be honest, it is not an easy problem to solve for such hardware compatibility issue, but we will investigate further. Anyway, we are sorry for the inconvenience.