VOGONS

win2k refuses to recognize sd card in pcmcia reader (works in win95, nt4 on same machine)

Topic actions

First post, by stanwebber

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

i'm stymied. this is a fresh install of win2k (no service packs). i just got done installing win95 & nt4 on the same machine to separate, identical cf cards (ide > cf adapter) with absolutely no problems using pcmcia to both sd & cf card readers. win2k recognizes the pcmcia sd reader, initializes the pcmcia ata controller device, but no disk drive is detected. the pcmcia cf reader has no issues.

i've tried swapping sd cards & pcmcia slots, switching drivers from pcmcia to standard ata controllers and uninstalling every device connected to the pcmcia bus to let win2k re-detect & re-install the drivers. nothing works (except when i switch back to win95 or nt4).

the kicker is i have another laptop with win2k (no service packs) installed and the pcmcia sd reader works just fine! the significant difference is a 32bit cardbus instead of a 16bit pcmcia bus, but still.

this is a deal breaker for win2k. what else can i try to resolve this?

Reply 1 of 2, by stanwebber

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

i found this microsoft kb article which looked promising:

https://www.betaarchive.com/wiki/index.php?ti … _Archive/281505

i extracted pcmcia.inf & pcmcia.sys from service pack 3 and installed them with no result. against my better judgement i went ahead and installed service pack 4, but again, nothing changed except that my boot wait time increased 300% and explorer now has an annoying middle pane that i can't figure out how to get rid of.

time to re-install win2k and try something else...

Reply 2 of 2, by stanwebber

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

i eventually figured this out thru a lot of trial & error. it wasn't specifically the pcmcia sd card reader that was the problem; it had more to do with the pcmcia slot order which is nonsensical. it turns out both sd & cf card readers fail to be detected under win2k...the only exception to this is when both pcmcia slots are populated then, in this circumstance, only the reader in slot 0 is accessible. it took me a long time to notice this pattern because i always plugged the readers into the same slots and only changed things up with the sd card reader which never worked. win2k is asinine.

Go to top of page Go to top of page
Back to General Old Hardware
Close window
Close window