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Extra Value 4 Port Hi-speed USB 2.0 Cardbus PCMCIA Adapter
- £10.93ex vat
- £12.57inc vat
Need it fast? You have:
Saturday, 6th December.
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- manufacturer #: TAC-PC108
- quickfind code: 60611
- 6 in stock for next day delivery.
12 reviews
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Product Reviews
Great adapter
os:
Windows XPWorks well, just plugged in to the laptop, seems reasonably sturdy as it needs to be when the usb leads get plugged into it.
NEC driver needed to get enhanced feature (USB 2.0) try driverguide
Works great
os:
Windows 2000Plugged in to my Win2000 Dell laptop and it just worked. Plugged in a USB2 disk drive and again it just worked and really fast but not full speed, but I think the laptop itsself may have been the bottle neck here but it was still much faster than USB 1. Good buy!
What a ruddy bargain!
Plugged it into my hp compaq nx9005 laptop, and it worked immediately. Really pleased with this spur of the moment purchase, not least cos I can plug my creative mp3 player in without having to sacrifice my AC power connection, and downloads are so much faster. Ebuyer - excellent service, excellent quality! Keep up the good work. :o)
cheap as chips works on linux
os:
LinuxWorks on Linux on a Dell laptop (inspiron 1100 running Xubuntu, 8.10) bought it as an alternative to a hub and to reposition the awkward existing usb ports.
It has a power supply socket and a USB to power plug - so to suppy additional power you can hook it up to a powered hub, use an existing USB port or one of those USB power adaptors - although I've yet to use it with anything that needs much power.
Installing the 4 port USB 2.0 controller
I initially installed this using windows drivers. However I got a blue screen crash if I connected an external self powered drive without power to the cardbus or a portable drive with power to the cardbus.
The fix is to update the cardbus controller driver using the software on the driver CD in folder NECuPD720102. Just follow the instructions in the folder and all is well.
Power Socket
os:
Windows XPI was a bit frustrated at first, it wasn't recognised at all, although the drivers seemed to install OK. Thanks to Mark Woodland's comment I realised it had to be externally powered. It now works OK. The mininmal instructions do not mention this and they are also incorrect, the driver is supplied as an EXE file and so cannot installed in the way described.
8/10 for the product
0/10 for the instructions
Good
os:
Windows XPInstalled with no problems on 5/6 yr old Hi-Grade Notino 3400 notebook, but the instructions are not all that clear.
This may help future purchasers with the installation:
On the (my) box is a sticker stating "NEC CardBus 4 Port".
In small writing just below it is the chipset used. In my case D-720101.
On the CD in the NEC directory (folder) are 3 more dirs one of which is uPD720101 and in there is the setup.exe.
This worked for me:
Do not plug in the adapter yet.
Run setup.exe and let it do its stuff (no warning it just installs driver v2.4.1).
Plug in the adapter and wait for the drivers to install.
Done
Performance:
My Western Digital 120GB HDD in a Freecom Classic USB 2 case manages 9MB/s (constant*) in HDtune (v2.53). Still way faster than the 1.5MB/s on my notebook's built-in USB port. the same drive plugged into my main system manages 17.5MB/s (again constant, limited by hub). The built-in 20GB IBM notebook HDD manages 17MB/s (peak) also, so I assume the adapter is the limiting factor at 9MB/s, though it could be the PCMCIA port itself.
*the speed should drop off, drawing a curve, between the start and end of the drive, but if the interface is limiting the drive then the speed will be constant throughout drawing a horizontal straight line.
Power is via 5v 2A supply 4mm plug, centre pin positive. Note. 2A is 0.5A/USB port so a 1A supply can be used but can only power 2 ports.
Summary:
If 9MB/s is acceptable to you then I can recommend it.
Note: I haven't tested the power supply side of it, my external drive has its own power.
4 stars due to 9MB/s throughput.
Power Supply
Can anyone tell me where i can get a power supply that will work with this USB adaptor?
Cheers
Dave
Needed to download driver from dell.com
os:
Windows XPAllowing XP to find it's own driver worked for read speeds from my external Freecom hard drive but write speeds were excruciatingly slow. Drivers on supplied disc of no use as my PC could not find one when I allowed it to search disc, and I couldnt manually find one. So I checked the name of the the PCMCIA hardware in the Device Manager (via control panel on PC. It was and O2 Micro OZ6912 (Both letter 'O' not zero) CardBus Controller. Googled OZ6912 and was led to dell.com driver page. Downloaded the driver and everything was fine. Better documentation would have gained 5 star rating.
Power Socket
The small leaflet that came with mine states that it is 5v DC @ 2.0A (Positive).
Hope this helps.
Mark.
