Firewire readers fail in Win2K?

Greg M said:

Duh! Did I not say that firewire has had no competition up to
now?????

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I don't think USB 2.0 is a competitor with Firewire. USB 2 is made to replace the original USB, Firewire goes further as high speed device connecting standard. USB 2 will be useful for linking consumer printers, scanners and low cost cameras, but Firewire will remain the standard for high hend devices like pro DSLR camera. I noticed that USB 2.0 is gaining it's field BESIDE Firewire, not substituting it (think about hard disk drives, CD-RW and even the Epson 2100 7-color printer: if they have USB 2, they have also Firewire...). And more, USB 2 in real world test is still slower than Firewire (less than 10 Mb/s vs. 20 or more MB/s), and still mantain USB problems (it still need an hub, etc...). Now that Gigawire is coming, USB 2 won't be a problem.

Greg M said:

Typical Mac user with his head in the sand. You can honestly say
that everything available for the PC is available for the Mac? I
didn't think so.

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Seems that PC users are more head-sanded than Mac ones. They think that the only reality in computer world is Windows+Intel or AMD processors. Luckily, it is not. There are many alternatives, not only Apple ones, and many solutions available for ALL the platforms. I bought PC components for my Macs, put them in Firewire boxes, and they worked. Changed 3 digicams in two years, and they all worked. Used Canon and Epson consumer printers and scanners, and worked. Even a Microsoft Sidewinder joystick worked! And I never needed a driver. Must I be sad for this? Have I to sell everything for switching to assembled Wintel junkware only because a lot of people have it?

Regards,

---

---> Matteo Barducci

Hello Walt,

I have also a USB printer (Canon BJC-8200, now switching to Epson 2100) with an USB scanner attached to my iMac. DSL Ethernet modem linked to the built in port. Kodak and Canon digicams attached to USB (even keyboard port...), external Firewire HD, card reader and CD-RW, USB MIDI and audio card and five speakers attached. Never required a thirdy-part software installed or driver (except for audio devices). Certainly, you have your reasons to return back to PC after a brief Mac experience, but I have mine to NEVER pass on the other side.

Best regards,

---

---> Matteo Barducci

It's a type of English humour......

'vastly superior' in quotes, does not mean vastly superior.....

It means the opposite you see....

I'm beginning to think that having an M after your first name, stands for Microsoft!

--
http://www.d30-images.com
[email protected]

Matteo Barducci said:

Greg M said:

What motherboard, ram, power supply, bios settings, CPU heatsink
... there are many things that affect stability no matter what
platform you choose. Your comparison here is pathetic. And about
the so called superdrive, how fast, I mean slow is it?

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Dear Greg,

These things only affect stability on a Wintel platform. I used
both for about 17 years and Macs never had problems with stuff you

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Now this statement is just flat out WRONG. The reason that you might not run into these as often on a Mac is because Apple has already made you pay for the more expensive MB, power supply, etc... This is also why they have priced themselves out of many people's budget for a computer. If a PC is put together properly, then it is very stable and still much cheaper then the Mac with more software and devices available for it. This is why the market share of the PC is so much larger then the market share for the Mac. It is really a very simple concept.

Matteo Barducci said:

elencated. I need machines to work, and I cannot waste time with
trying to get the components working together with a pathetical OS

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This is another Mac myth. The Mac OS has had it's problems also. It is much easier to make things work better when there are less devices that have to work. Also you need to compare the Mac OS to the NT OS. The NT OS is much more stable then the win 9x OS. Don't forget that most problems arise from conflicting drivers from different manufacturers and not from the OS. With the NT OS the different manufactures have had to do a better job at writing the drivers for their devices and the OS does a better job at preventing bad drivers from affecting the rest of the system.

However, I do understand that the Mac people want the KISS method. This is why the Mac works for them. I'd rather have a better understanding of my computer and save a ton of money. Oh, by the way, my system runs great and that's because it was built properly.

Matteo Barducci said:

like Windows. And concerning the Superdrive, it's also known as
Pioneer DVR-104 (A04) DVD writer... Maybe can be slow on writing
CDs (altough I never burnt out one...), but I do DVDs and red book
audio CDs (I has a recording studio) and EVERY people I gave it was
able to read with their consumer home equipment.

Regards,
---

---> Matteo Barducci

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F.U. Bee said:

Joe Wilson said:

Thanks!

Joe...

F.U. Bee said:

I've tried three different firewire readers, three different
firewire adapters, in three different computers! The same problem
in all (in Win2K). The reader will work when the machine is turned
on, but when left for a day or so, the reader are no longer
"active," and one must pull out the cord in the back on the PC and
reinsert it. Sometimes this works; other times, a reboot is
required.

What's up??????? Scoured the net for this topic. Nothing.

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F. U. and Joe Wilson,

I have sent an email to Joe as well, since I have the same problem with Win2K, a single computer and 2 separate card readers.

F. U. - thanks for sticking with the problem, and Joe, if you can help us with this I'd be very greatful.
--
Lonnie

Chris Dodkin said:

It's a type of English humour......

'vastly superior' in quotes, does not mean vastly superior.....

It means the opposite you see....

I'm beginning to think that having an M after your first name,
stands for Microsoft!

Click to expand...

Very funny. I only wish that it also stood Microsoft's money.

Member said:

--
http://www.d30-images.com
[email protected]

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I honestly did give the Mac serious consideration. I was going to buy one until I started to add up what it would cost me and I simply could not afford it. It is very expensive to make the switch. I don't see the advantage to switching anyways. It might sound like I'm contradicting myself but I was looking at the dual processor system which is suppose to run PS very well. I wanted to be able to print and process pictures at the same time which will really slow down a single processor machine. What I finally decided on was to use 2 computers, already had them next to each other doing different things. It has worked out well. The reason that it makes such a difference is because I am using an Epson 870 and it prints real slooooow.

Since the subject of the thread was FireWire, please tell me, what FireWire devices are available for the PC which are not available for the Mac? Or USB2.0 devices for that matter?

Note: I'm not taking a hard line here and implying one system is better than another; you're perfectly free to prefer whatever you like.

Greg M said:

A Mac has fewer options and fewer devices available. It is soooo
much easier to make things work right when there are fewer options
available. A PC has numerous options for every kind of device.
The choices are amazing. The downside to such flexibility is that

Click to expand...

Matteo Barducci said:

Athlon XP 1800+ w ATI Radeon 8500 graphic and XP Pro: 3 restart in
1/2 an hour.

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That happened to someone I know. It ran like a clock once we removed the faulty memory DIMM in his system. (I heartily recommend http://memtest86.com for detecting RAM faults -- make sure all tests run fine, it wasn't until test 6 and 7 that the faulty chip was unmasked)

WinNT/2000/XP never crash unless you have faulty hardware or poorly written device drivers. (atleast that's my experience after having used NT since '93 -- there are some exceptions, but they're rare)

Matteo Barducci said:

iMac 800 Superdrive w MacOS X: 23 days of uptime (and only a
restart for security...)

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23 days is nothing special.

My Win2k machine at work runs for 3 months at a time without me even logging off. (or 'continuously' if you don't count controlled reboots and physical relocation of the machine)

--
Rune

Member said:

As computer users who pay a premium for our equipment, we must
therefore be convinced that it is worth it.

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This is what Mac users always say, but I fail to see the premium value myself.

I've stated this before, I am not anti-Mac. My wife has a new G4 that is hooked to my lan & I use it whenever my son has my custom Athlon(XP Pro)tied up. The reason my son is always using my computer is simple, the Mac won't run any of his games or programs.

Both the Mac & my computer have Photoshop 7.0 installed in them. I was editing some photos last night on the Mac & it worked great, but it doesn't do one single thing better than my PC as far as I can see. It is not faster, it is not more stable, & it certainly isn't a better dollar value.

-John

I do know about the "eject" action. But guess what: You're not supposed to have to use that. This according to Lexar. There's an eject button on the front of most Firewire readers. That's to be used to eject the card manually; no instruction booklet says to eject via software first.

Rune Moberg said:

Chris Dodkin said:

Poor old Rune, he MUST be stupid.......

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Or simply: I have worked in a customer support capacity. (we
software developers are unfortunately not always 100% shielded from
the wrath of our customers -- fortunately the number of
"mysterious" incidents has dropped dramatically after most users
have migrated from Win9x/ME to the NT/2000 platform)

I simply got the impression that the original poster didn't even
know about the "Eject" action (as per a posting in this very thread
IIRC), and it looked like this had made a difference in other cases.

That aside Chris, there's also the option that this fault entirely
belongs to the manufacturer of the Firewire reader. I notice that
Lexar has a Macintosh driver. Would you blame Apple if Lexar's
driver messed up your system?

--
Rune

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Of course I'll stick with the problem. There's one thing I know about myself: I'm very savvy with PCs (it's my job). When something doesn't work, it's usually not my fault.

Lonnie said:

F.U. Bee said:

Joe Wilson said:

Thanks!

Joe...

F.U. Bee said:

I've tried three different firewire readers, three different
firewire adapters, in three different computers! The same problem
in all (in Win2K). The reader will work when the machine is turned
on, but when left for a day or so, the reader are no longer
"active," and one must pull out the cord in the back on the PC and
reinsert it. Sometimes this works; other times, a reboot is
required.

What's up??????? Scoured the net for this topic. Nothing.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

F. U. and Joe Wilson,

I have sent an email to Joe as well, since I have the same problem
with Win2K, a single computer and 2 separate card readers.

F. U. - thanks for sticking with the problem, and Joe, if you can
help us with this I'd be very greatful.
--
Lonnie

Click to expand...

Adaptec firewire card, Lexar firewire CF reader, the machine's been on for about, oh, 2 months. No problems.

Which probably doesn't help you much, but I doubt Win2K itself is the problem.

One thing you do need to make sure of is do not use the "stop firewire device" feature from the task bar. That actually turns the device off, and you'd have to unplug it and re-plug it to get it working again. It should show up as an ejectable drive, so you should be able to just pop out the card once it's done reading/writing.

I'd bet that your problem is a PC specific problem. I have been trying to install W2K for over eight days and the only consistent thing I've found is that my machine will reboot or shut down just fine when I first install W2K but after adding hardware and software any attempt to do either sends my machine to a static "dos" screen with a blinking cursor. I called the outfit that sold me the machine and they said that my computer was "old" and that it didn't support that feature. ("Old" is anything that's been out of the store a week)

I traded ME for W2K because I got tired of blue screens. Now I get senility where every now and then the machine takes over two minutes to repond to a mouse click. (meanwhile you can hear the hd working at something).

Anyone have a copy of DOS 1.0?

billtoo

F.U. Bee said:

I've tried three different firewire readers, three different
firewire adapters, in three different computers! The same problem
in all (in Win2K). The reader will work when the machine is turned
on, but when left for a day or so, the reader are no longer
"active," and one must pull out the cord in the back on the PC and
reinsert it. Sometimes this works; other times, a reboot is
required.

What's up??????? Scoured the net for this topic. Nothing.

Click to expand...

--
billtoo

http://www.pbase.com/billtoo

I ran into this problem you describe below, and the workaround I found was to:

1) make sure there are no explorer windows open viewing the CF card
2) right click on the drive letter for the CF reader and select "eject"

You get a different error saying it can't actually eject the card, but now when you manually eject Windows won't complain or screw up because it's actually flushed all cached data for that drive. A kludge I know but IMO far better than using USB.

Apparently XP fixes this problem, among other FW issues.

Lonnie said:

I have a similar problem (Win2k, Svc pack 1 and 2). I have tried
two different firewire card readers (different brands) with the
same result. It SEEMS to be related to removing the CF card when
the computer says the CF card is "busy" and I should "try again
later". (Even though it SHOULDN'T be busy!) After removing the card
against the advice of the OS, the CF card is never again
recognized.

Click to expand...

F.U. Bee said:

Ah, okay, there is an eject option with the card in the reader.
However, the following error message ensues:

An error was encountered trying to unmount Removable Disk J.

Click to expand...

Yes W2k does this, but as far as I can tell what it's actually complaining about is that it can't physically eject the media (like it could for, say, a CD rom). However once you dismiss this dialog, you can pop the CF card out and you should be okay.

I hear tell Win XP does indeed fix this issue, FWIW.

sean said:

F.U. Bee said:

Ah, okay, there is an eject option with the card in the reader.
However, the following error message ensues:

An error was encountered trying to unmount Removable Disk J.

Click to expand...

Yes W2k does this, but as far as I can tell what it's actually
complaining about is that it can't physically eject the media (like
it could for, say, a CD rom). However once you dismiss this dialog,
you can pop the CF card out and you should be okay.

Click to expand...

--
http://www.seanansorge.com

Just stop using computers altogether! No more error dialogs! Whee!

;-p

bill hepp said:

thing I've found is that my machine will reboot or shut down just
fine when I first install W2K but after adding hardware and
software any attempt to do either sends my machine to a static

Click to expand...

In that case: Isolate the piece of hardware that's rubbing your machine the wrong way. Install every device one by one. Make sure you have the latest drivers installed. Also perform a thorough check of your memory ( http://memtest86.com ). PCs with memory faults tend to run "fine" with Win9x/ME for years, but Win2k/XP will easily throw a fit when exposed to faulty hardware (which is actually a feature; nip problems in the bud, not after the symptoms have corrupted large amount of data randomly).

--
Rune

F.U. Bee said:

I do know about the "eject" action. But guess what: You're not
supposed to have to use that. This according to Lexar. There's an
eject button on the front of most Firewire readers. That's to be
used to eject the card manually; no instruction booklet says to
eject via software first.

Click to expand...

Ok, and the eject button waits for the device to finish writing (like a CD-RW drive controlled by the OS)?

BTW: Did you read Phil's review of the Unity CF reader? ( http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/unitydigitalfwreader/ ) He mentions that "Sometimes if you just take the card out the OS will complain that it was attempting to write data to the device, I personally use a utility called sync from sysinternals.com", but that's not what's affecting you?

(Have you tried issuing eject from Explorer rather than using the eject button? If it makes a difference then atleast that adds more information to this puzzle)

--
Rune

Sounds like the machine does not have enough memory to properly run Win2000. Anything less then 128 MB will make the machine respond very slow as Win2000 needs much more memory then Win98/Me. Better is to use 256 or 512 when you use PS6.

Rob

Rune Moberg said:

bill hepp said:

thing I've found is that my machine will reboot or shut down just
fine when I first install W2K but after adding hardware and
software any attempt to do either sends my machine to a static

Click to expand...

In that case: Isolate the piece of hardware that's rubbing your
machine the wrong way. Install every device one by one. Make sure
you have the latest drivers installed. Also perform a thorough
check of your memory ( http://memtest86.com ). PCs with memory faults
tend to run "fine" with Win9x/ME for years, but Win2k/XP will
easily throw a fit when exposed to faulty hardware (which is
actually a feature; nip problems in the bud, not after the symptoms
have corrupted large amount of data randomly).

--
Rune

Click to expand...

--
Rob Smit

http://www.pbase.com/chinaman20