How to Read SmartMedia with Windows NT?

I'm going on vacation in June and of course will take my C-2100. At home, I run Windows XP and use a USB card reader to download my pictures from the SmartMedia card. Works great.

I am planning on taking my company laptop with me on vacation to store pictures on. It runs Windows NT 4.0 (SP6). I picked up an Antec PCMCIA SmartMedia adapter yesterday, but I can't seem to use it on my laptop - NT doesn't seem to recognize it. Also, there is a note on Antec's web site about Olympus' use of a non-standard file system on their SM cards, but I'm using a CompUSA brand card and have not enabled panorama on that card, so I don't think that is the issue.

Is anyone reading their SmartMedia cards on an NT machine and if so what device are you using?

Thanks in advance,

Gary

--
C-2100UZ
Canon S900

I use Windows NT at work also. It is hard to get any USB device to work on NT. I dunno why. The only EASY solution, but slow, would be to get the serial connection for the UZI and transfer them that way. Have you tried to use the USB connection directly from the UZI?

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

--
John M

At my company we're ready to move to either XP on Win2000 just because NT4 does not support USB according to our IT department.

Mephy said:

I use Windows NT at work also. It is hard to get any USB device to
work on NT. I dunno why. The only EASY solution, but slow, would
be to get the serial connection for the UZI and transfer them that
way. Have you tried to use the USB connection directly from the
UZI?

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

Click to expand...

If they don't think NT has USB support. Maybe the version you have doesn't, but if you get the right service pack and all, it CAN support it.
What an IT department LoL!!!!

Flatron1 said:

Mephy said:

I use Windows NT at work also. It is hard to get any USB device to
work on NT. I dunno why. The only EASY solution, but slow, would
be to get the serial connection for the UZI and transfer them that
way. Have you tried to use the USB connection directly from the
UZI?

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

Can't help with the USB thing, but my NT machine reads all type cards just fine with its ActionTec card reader. It was bought 3 or 4 years ago. Don't know about modern card reader. It's a parallel port connect.

Just remebered, for about 60 dollars you can get a floppy disk adaptor for smart media cards. That would read them in any computer. I'm pretty sure they all so make a smart media to 'PC" card adaptor for your laptop. I do wish that Olympus used the compact flash type of memory. It would be a direct input to laptops with a "PC" slot.

Kenneth Pierce said:

Can't help with the USB thing, but my NT machine reads all type
cards just fine with its ActionTec card reader. It was bought 3 or
4 years ago. Don't know about modern card reader. It's a parallel
port connect.

Click to expand...

I can see the thread wandering a bit. I think the original question referred to the pc-card or pcmcia to SM adapter. I don't know why NT will not recognize the pcmcia card. I use one in my Win98 notebook and my HP Jornada 720 Handheld Pocket PC machine without any problems. Maybe a service pack for the PCMCIA slot is required. I'm always amazed at how many Service Packs NT requires.

Kenneth Pierce said:

Kenneth Pierce said:

Can't help with the USB thing, but my NT machine reads all type
cards just fine with its ActionTec card reader. It was bought 3 or
4 years ago. Don't know about modern card reader. It's a parallel
port connect.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
C3O3Oz, C21OOuz, EagleEye 5x, D34OL, HP 97Oc
http://www.jamesthompsonconsultingengineer.com

We are not talking about USB, we are talking about PCMCIa cards. I use a PCNCIA card in 3 different laptops, one is 2000 and the others are NT. Just make sure the PCMCIA drivers are loaded in the note book. They should have come loaded when they got the it but they may not have been.

NT is not Plug n Play so you may need to just go in and add new hardware. You should have got a disk witht the card that will have the drives or they will be on the laptop already.

When you put the card in the slot it should make a sound of some type, a beep of some type. It shold all so make it when you take the card out,

Let us know if you need more help.

--
Bill Huber, Fort Worth, Tx
UZI, http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber

Hi Mephy,

they'll probably have another non-disclosed reason. You know, large company secrets.

Flatron

Mephy said:

Flatron1 said:

Mephy said:

I use Windows NT at work also. It is hard to get any USB device to
work on NT. I dunno why. The only EASY solution, but slow, would
be to get the serial connection for the UZI and transfer them that
way. Have you tried to use the USB connection directly from the
UZI?

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

Click to expand...

LoL, ya, I wouldn't doubt it!!! LoL

Flatron1 said:

they'll probably have another non-disclosed reason. You know,
large company secrets.

Flatron

Mephy said:

Flatron1 said:

Mephy said:

I use Windows NT at work also. It is hard to get any USB device to
work on NT. I dunno why. The only EASY solution, but slow, would
be to get the serial connection for the UZI and transfer them that
way. Have you tried to use the USB connection directly from the
UZI?

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

Mephy,

Thanks, but NT doesn't support USB, so I'm not even trying that.

Gary

Mephy said:

I use Windows NT at work also. It is hard to get any USB device to
work on NT. I dunno why. The only EASY solution, but slow, would
be to get the serial connection for the UZI and transfer them that
way. Have you tried to use the USB connection directly from the
UZI?

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

Click to expand...

--
C-2100UZ
Canon S900

Bill,

Which PCMCIA card are you using? I use a couple of other PCMCIA cards in my laptop, so yes the base drivers are there. There were no drivers supplied with the Antec card and none on their website. I sent tech support at Antec an email, but have not heard back from them.

Thanks in advance,

Gary

Bill Huber said:

We are not talking about USB, we are talking about PCMCIa cards. I
use a PCNCIA card in 3 different laptops, one is 2000 and the
others are NT. Just make sure the PCMCIA drivers are loaded in the
note book. They should have come loaded when they got the it but
they may not have been.

NT is not Plug n Play so you may need to just go in and add new
hardware. You should have got a disk witht the card that will have
the drives or they will be on the laptop already.

When you put the card in the slot it should make a sound of some
type, a beep of some type. It shold all so make it when you take
the card out,

Let us know if you need more help.

--
Bill Huber, Fort Worth, Tx
UZI, http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber

Click to expand...

--
C-2100UZ
Canon S900

Well, technically, NT does support USB, but not from Microsoft. It's really NOT worth the trouble anyway.

GEBrown said:

Thanks, but NT doesn't support USB, so I'm not even trying that.

Gary

Mephy said:

I use Windows NT at work also. It is hard to get any USB device to
work on NT. I dunno why. The only EASY solution, but slow, would
be to get the serial connection for the UZI and transfer them that
way. Have you tried to use the USB connection directly from the
UZI?

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

Click to expand...

--
C-2100UZ
Canon S900

Click to expand...

--
That's my 10¢, my 2¢ is free.

Mephy, The Great I Am.

I used the drivers that came with NT they were on it when it came.

Have you put a modem or nic in and see if it sees them

You may want to go to the web site of the computer and see it they have anything on their site about them.

--
Bill Huber, Fort Worth, Tx
UZI, http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber

did u go to the device manager and tried to activate the device manualy? i had an NT machine at work, and we had to do it everytime we've put a new card in it. there is an option for automatic start, make sure u choose this one and save the truble in the future.
hope that helps,
avian

Bill Huber said:

I used the drivers that came with NT they were on it when it came.

Have you put a modem or nic in and see if it sees them

You may want to go to the web site of the computer and see it they
have anything on their site about them.

--
Bill Huber, Fort Worth, Tx
UZI, http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber

Click to expand...

Avian,

Thanks, but as the Antec card did not come with any drivers, there is nothing specific to it in the device manager. The PCMCIA service is starting automatically and my other PCMCIA cards are coming up just fine.

Gary

avian said:

Bill Huber said:

I used the drivers that came with NT they were on it when it came.

Have you put a modem or nic in and see if it sees them

You may want to go to the web site of the computer and see it they
have anything on their site about them.

--
Bill Huber, Fort Worth, Tx
UZI, http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
C-2100UZ
Canon S900

Bill,

Thanks. I have two other PCMCIA cards, a wired NIC and a wireless NIC and they both come up just fine - but they also came with their own drivers.

I did go to Toshiba's web site and found a slightly newer BIOS which I have upgraded to. One of the things that was fixed had to do with PCMCIA cards. I'm at work right now and the card reader is at home, so I will have to test it later.

Will let you know what I find out.

Gary

Bill Huber said:

I used the drivers that came with NT they were on it when it came.

Have you put a modem or nic in and see if it sees them

You may want to go to the web site of the computer and see it they
have anything on their site about them.

--
Bill Huber, Fort Worth, Tx
UZI, http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber

Click to expand...

--
C-2100UZ
Canon S900

I have not used NT on a notebook in a couple of years, so I am working largely from memory here.

1st - keep in mind that the Windows NT 4.0 kernel was not designed to support plug-n-play hardware, which is a key technology for PCMCIA and USB-based hardware. Service Packs have provided some limited PnP functionality for NT4, but nothing near as robust as the PnP support in Win9x/me/2K/XP.

2nd - You are attempting to add a Storage type device to the system. To make this happen (again - working from memory), you will likely have to use the Disk Manager (is that the right name) to tell NT that a new hard disk is present in your system and to assign a letter to it.

3rd - (this may not be an issue here, but). NT does not include much in the way of card and socket services for PCMCIA devices. Most Notebook vendors provided a third-party package to C&S services under NT 4.0. You may need to configure your C&S services software to recognize a storage-class device in your PCMCIA slot.

I know that is not the answer that you want to hear, but the path of least resistance may be to upgrade to W2K or (God forbid...) XP Pro.

--
Ed Kleinhample