Re: [Thinkpad] Anyone using an IEEE-1394/Firewire PCMCIA card withT41?

At 09:13 PM 3/6/2004, you wrote:
>Well, this is the WiFi card they sold me when I bought the 2379-DJU with
>the drivers they shipped on the HD, so what exactly would be the problem
>with that? I'm upgraded to the IBM a/b/g card which is an upgrade they
>offer on their web site. That too should be a non-issue.
>
>As for the updated Intel driver, that too came from IBM, as have all of my
>drivers. In fact the problem I had with the HD firmware was because I
>followed IBM's docs - I also flashed the BIOS to the new 3.00c version
>just this past Friday. What I've done with my own install is opted for
>WinXP to manage the WiFi connections, rather than Active Connections from
>IBM. I've also turned off the Active HD Protection and opted not to
>install the Custom Keyboard Utility. All of those shouldn't cause an
>issue by my experiences with XP.
>
>Don't worry about offending me - Bruce hasn't done that either. He just
>pisses me off when he wastes time making suggestions that I have tried and
>haven't worked and then tries to yell at me for not trying it again. :)

My experiences with Win2000 on an older A21p (Win2000 install from
IBM with updated service packs, critical updates from MS and newer
version drivers from IBM):

1) IBM Cardbus IEEE-1394 Card works fine without adding any drivers.
The driver supplied in Windows 2000 works fine - I have used it with a HD
and with a DVD-R for burning DVD-R and CD-R disks. The IBM Card is
recognized as a "Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller"
in device manager. You do need to stop things prior to removal.

2) Access connections would NOT work with both PCMCIA and cardbus
Linksys Wireless adapters. It works (mostly) with an IBM a/b/g cardbus
Wireless card.

3) According to the docs with Access connections, you need to turn off
the Windows wireless configuration stuff to use Access connections to manage
various "connections". I did turn that off.

4) The IBM a/b/g card worked fine without Access Connections on several
notebooks running Win2000 with the provided drivers and newer ones found on
the IBM web site.

5) The latest Access connections has reported errors various times
when connecting to the a/b/g card claiming that a newer driver version
is required. I'm using the latest driver that I can find and it is listed
as OK in the docs provided on the IBM site for the latest Access Connections.
The card works after the error is put up on the screen and I dismiss the box.

6) Make sure the firmware in your wireless router is up-to-date. I
had some problems (VPN would not work over wireless but would over a
cable connection to the wireless router, etc) until I put the latest
firmware into my wireless router (several different Linksys routers tried
including ones doing b and later g).

The A21p does not have built-in wireless. It has a miniPCI Intel Pro100/
modem card. I have a 60 GB 7200 RPM Hitachi drive in the A21p (purchased
from Bill Morrow). I dual boot Win2000 and Sun Solaris x86, version 9.
I updated the BIOS in the drive and have had no problems since. Both
approximate 30 GB partitions are fully usable (one is NTFS for Windows and
the other is UFS for Solaris). I use a 512 MB CF card in a PC card adapter
(both from SanDisk) to move files between the two different operating systems
as required (Windows doesn't understand UFS and Solaris doesn't understand
NTFS - both understand FAT of various versions). I don't have a Solaris
driver for the IBM a/b/g card so I use a Linksys WPC11 wireless card with
Solaris. Nothing so fancy as Access Connections with Solaris but things
just work without errors.

I guess maybe I should try XP Pro on the A21p based on what I've been reading
on the list. I assume it would work OK with 512 MB of RAM (max for the A21p).

Stuart

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Received on Sun Mar 7 07:07:26 2004