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PSeries Driver 5.00 release notes
IMPORTANT CONFIGURATION INFORMATION
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY
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It is recommended that you install these drivers
BEFORE installation of the PCMCIA adapter in
your PC. Your PC may lock up if you don't!
******************* WARNING *******************
In the unlikely event of problems with the installation
of the PSeries drivers and hardware, BEFORE you do
anything, you should make sure you have backed up
any important information on your PC.
The notes below may recommend alterations to the
operating system registry or files on your hard disk.
You should make sure you have backed up the contents
of your hard disk before making any changes.
It is advised that any changes to the registry should be
performed by experienced personnel only.
Elan can not take any responsibility for loss of data
etc., should this occur.
************************************************
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Contents
========
1 Current Device and Operating System Support List
2 General Troubleshooting Section
3 Specific Windows 95/98/Me problems
4 Specific Windows NT/2000 problems
5 Uninstalling the PSeries drivers
6 Customer Technical Support
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1 Current Device and Operating System Support List
================================================
The Following PCMCIA devices are supported by this version of the
PSeries drivers:
16-bit controllers
------------------
CL-PD6729
BASIS CL-PD6729
O2M_OZ6729
CardBus controllers
-------------------
CL-PD6832
TI-PCI1211
TI-PCI1225
TI-PCI1250
TI-PCI1251
TI-PCI1410
TI-PCI1420
O2M-OZ6812
O2M-OZ6832
O2M-OZ6833
Ricoh R5C475II
Ricoh R5C476II
The following operating systems are supported by this version
of the PSeries drivers:
16 bit PC-Card controllers
--------------------------
Windows 95 (retail release) first release of Win 95
Windows 95 with update pack installed (Version A)
Windows 95 OSR2 oem version (Version B)
Windows 98 first release
Windows 98+SP1 (Service pack installed)
Windows 98SE (Second Edition)
Windows Me
Windows NT 4.0+SP6
Windows 2000+SP1
32 bit CardBus controllers
--------------------------
Windows 95 OSR2 oem version (Version B)
Windows 98 first release
Windows 98+SP1 (Service pack installed)
Windows 98SE (Second Edition)
Windows Me
Windows NT 4.0+SP6 (16 bit PC-Cards only)
Windows 2000+SP1
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2 General Troubleshooting Section
=================================
2.1 Laptop Computers and the PSeries drivers
============================================
The PSeries drivers are designed to operate with
specially designed PCI based PC-Card adapters on
add-in boards for desktop PC's.
You should NOT install these drivers on any other
hardware platform, THEY WILL NOT WORK!
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2.2 Dirty Interrupt Service Routines (ISR's)
============================================
The PSeries hardware relies on interrupts that are
level sensitive and can be shared. This means that
the PC-Card's ISR should be written correctly for
this environment. For most efficient operation, the
ISR should fully handle the IRQ in processor
"Ring 0" (DIRQL), by immediately removing the source
of the interrupt. In most cases this is true, and is
recommended by Microsoft as the way to handle
hardware interrupts. Some poorly written PC-Card
drivers do not handle the interrupt in this way which
is ok for ISA based edge triggered interrupts, but
cause problems in the PCI environment.
The PSeries driver contains special detection logic for
badly behaved ISR's that ensures the IRQ is handled
safely (without crashing the PC), but slowly (at approx
25% of possible performance).
If the PC-Card appears to be operating in this way,
access to the card will be sluggish and the ISR could
receive multiple unexpected interrupts. For improved
performance, you should contact your PC-Card vendor
for an updated driver that correctly handles the IRQ
according to Microsoft recommendations for
interrupt service routines.
The following cards have been detected with
this problem, if you are using one of these cards
you should contact the manufacturer of your card for
an updated driver:
* PROXIM RangeLAN2 wireless LAN card.
* WEB Gear Aviator 2.4 wireless LAN card.
* NoWiresNeeded 11MBPS wireless LAN card.
* Breezecom PRO.11 SA-PCR wireless LAN card.
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2.3 Motherboards with no Primary PCI Bus available
==================================================
On some motherboards, the primary PCI bus (BUS 0)
may not be available on the expansion slots (e.g.
motherboards with the Intel 810/840 chipset). Instead,
the expansion bus slots are behind a PCI to PCI bridge
and appear as Bus numbers 1 or higher.
In Windows 98 & 2000, the Windows drivers support
enumeration of PCI-PCI bridges so there should be no
problem with these motherboards.
In Windows NT4.0, support can only be provided if all
the PCI-PCI bridges are enumerated by the BIOS to pass
through appropriate memory and IO range accesses to
the PCMCIA adapter's PCI slot.
In Windows 95, this functionality is not supported.
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2.4 PC re-boots or crashes when booting with a PC-card inserted
===============================================================
On some PC's, the PCI interrupt may be being shared
with a motherboard peripheral device, or there may be
a PCI IRQ routing problem. This may cause problems if
the drivers for the peripheral device have not started
before the PSeries drivers. If this occurs, try moving
the PC-Card adapter to a different PCI slot.
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************************************************
3 Specific Windows 95/98/Me problems
************************************************
3.1 PCI IRQ routing in Windows 9x
=================================
For best operation, it is recommended that PCI IRQ routing
be enabled. On some motherboards, Windows fails to enable
PCI IRQ routing correctly. In this situation, it may be necessary to
force the Windows PCI Bus driver to use BIOS calls in order to
route PCI interrupts correctly. This is can be done via
Control Panel-System-Device Manager-System devices-PCI bus.
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3.2 Memory window allocation in Windows 9x
==========================================
On some PC's, PC-cards fail to be recognised by the
operating system when they are inserted, or even cause
the operating system to crash. This is usually due to a
memory clash where the operating system fails to
recognise that an upper memory range is not available
for use by the Microsoft PCMCIA drivers. If this occurs,
you should try forcing Card Services to use a
different memory range. Go to the Control Panel and
click on the PC-CARD icon, then override the memory
window setting to a different starting value
(like 0x000d0000).
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3.3 ATA Flash disk fails in Windows 9x
======================================
* Check the System Properties for the ATA card and
make sure an IO address range and an IRQ has been
allocated to the ATA card. If a memory address range
has been allocated to the card, this is usually caused
by lack of an IRQ, check PCI IRQ routing has been
enabled.
* If no IRQ has been allocated, Check PCI IRQ routing
has been enabled and/or free up an IRQ for use by the
ATA card.
* Check that the ATA card has been formatted correctly.
* If everything above is OK but no drive letter is being
assigned, add the line LASTDRIVE=Z to your config.sys
file. Be careful to make sure this does not conflict with
any network setup.
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3.4 Vector CANcardX in Windows 95
=================================
On the Cirrus 6729 based controller (PCI/PCIC
compatible) when the CANcardX card is inserted at
boot time, it is recognised as normal. However if the
card is ejected and re-inserted, it fails to be recognised.
If the card is not inserted at boot time, it operates
without any problem.
We believe this problem is related to Microsoft
Knowledge Base Article ID: Q159492.
SOLUTION 1
----------
**************************************************
**** 16-bit PC-Card adapters ONLY ****
**** DO NOT APPLY THIS FIX IF YOU ARE USING A ****
**** CARDBUS ADAPTER!!!!! ****
**************************************************
If this occurs and you are using a 16-bit PC-Card adapter
then copy pccard.vxd from the PSeries driver disk
to the "C:\Windows\System" directory and re-boot.
SOLUTION 2
----------
For CardBus adapters, either insert the CANcardX PC-Card
AFTER booting or do not eject the CANcardX PC-Card
SOLUTION 3
----------
Upgrade to another operating system.
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3.5 Linear FLASH card crashes the PC on insertion
=================================================
In Windows 95 OSR2, when a linear FLASH card without
"Attribute" memory is inserted AS THE FIRST CARD after
boot, or inserted before booting the PC, it may crash the PC.
This is a known bug in the PCCARD.VxD supplied with
Windows 95 OSR2.
SOLUTION 1
----------
**************************************************
**** 16-bit PC-Card adapters ONLY ****
**** DO NOT APPLY THIS FIX IF YOU ARE USING A ****
**** CARDBUS ADAPTER!!!!! ****
**************************************************
If this occurs and you are using a 16-bit PC-Card adapter
then copy pccard.vxd from the PSeries driver disk
to the "C:\Windows\System" directory and re-boot.
SOLUTION 2
----------
For CardBus adapters, insert another PC-Card BEFORE
inserting the FLASH card.
SOLUTION 3
----------
Upgrade to another operating system.
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3.6 Legacy ISA bus PC-Card drives
=================================
Windows 9x by default comes with support for many
CardBus and PC-Card controllers on the PCI bus of
laptop computers, the problem is they do not support
PCI based PC-Card drives correctly on desktop
computers, so must be disabled. For this reason, during
installation of the PSeries drivers, the PCMCIA.INF file
is moved to the c:\windows\system\oldpcmcia directory.
If you require support for pcmcia controllers (on the ISA
bus) that are not supported by the PSeries drivers, then
simply copy this file back to the c:\windows\inf directory
and go through the usual installation procedure for that
drive. You must be careful to make sure that any PCI bus
PC-Card/CardBus controller's are still using the PSeries
driver, otherwise the system may lock up when a card is
inserted in the slot of that controller.
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3.7 CardBus Card not detected at boot
=====================================
The current revision of the PSeries driver may not support
CardBus cards that are inserted at boot time on some PC's.
Elan is currently working on a fix for the problem which
should be available soon. Check our Website (see below)
for an updated driver.
If you are using a CardBus card, just eject and re-insert the
card. Windows 9x will then correctly detect it.
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3.8 Inserting PC-Card causes PC to crash
========================================
Some PC-Cards requiring a hardware IRQ may cause
the PC to stop responding as the IRQ is not properly
handled by the device driver for the card. (See
"2.2 Dirty Interrupt Service Routines" above.)
If this occurs, then assign a DWORD value named
"UltraSafeIRQHandlingMode" to the registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet
\Services\Class\PCMCIA\PSeries
Assign it a value of "1" to enable this mode of operation.
A value of "0" disables this mode of operation.
The following cards have been detected with
this problem:
* PROXIM RangeLAN2 wireless LAN card.
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3.9 Sleep mode support
======================
On some PC's with ACPI power saving enabled, the PCMCIA
card may not be accessible after the PC has woken up
from sleep mode.
With this (and earlier) release of the PSeries driver, sleep
mode is not properly supported. To make sure problems do not
occur, you should disable sleep mode power saving.
If your PC goes into sleep mode, you may eject and re-insert
the card and it should then work correctly.
Elan are currently working on a fix to resolve this problem.
If you require sleep mode support, check our website for the
latest details.
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3.10 PC-Card not detected after installation of the drivers
===========================================================
On some PC's the PC-Card may not be detected the first time
it is inserted in the PC-Card slot. You may need to eject
and re-boot the PC and then re-insert the card. You should
only have to do this at most once for each PC-Card slot.
The reason for this is that Card Services does not load
correctly the first time it is installed.
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************************************************
4 Specific Windows NT/2000 problems
************************************************
4.1 IRQ Conflicts in Windows NT
===============================
On some systems the PCI management IRQ is not
allocated correctly to the hardware by the system BIOS.
In this situation, the IRQ is automatically assigned and
requested from the system BIOS by the PSeries driver.
You can force the PSeries driver to use an alternative
IRQ by appropriately assigning a DWORD value named
"ManagmentIRQ" to the registry key:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet
\Services\PSeries\Parameters"
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4.2 IO Conflicts in Windows NT
==============================
On some systems the IO base address for the PCMCIA
controller is not allocated correctly by the system BIOS.
In this situation, no PCMCIA controller is detected by
Windows NT. To overcome this, the PSeries driver
automatically assigns an IO address of 0x3e0. You can
force the PSeries driver to assign a different IO address
to the controller by adding a DWORD value (like 0x3e0)
named "PCICBaseAddress" to the registry key:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet
\Services\PSeries\Parameters"
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4.3 Windows NT Service Packs
============================
The PSeries driver has been tested with Windows NT
Service Pack 6. If any Service pack is installed after the
installation of the PSeries drivers, you should re-install
the PSeries drivers.
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4.4 Two sockets reported in Windows NT
======================================
On a PC-Card drive with a single slot TI 1410 controller
in Windows NT4, two PC-Card slots are reported (in the
PC-Card information applet in the Control Panel) when
there is physically only one socket. This is a problem with
Windows NT's slot detection algorithm and may be safely
ignored.
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4.5 ATA Flash disk fails in Windows NT4
=======================================
If you are using an ATA flash (or rotating) PCMCIA disk
in the PC-Card slot, and your PC hangs at the first blue
screen (no dots appear) during boot up, or your PC boots
OK (but slowly) and the ATA disk is not accessible, or
the atdisk driver shows an IRQ as being shared by
another device (in "Windows NT Diagnostics").
The Atdisk driver requires an IRQ (usually IRQ9) that is
NOT SHARED by any other device. You should set the
IRQ it uses as "In use by ISA" (or similar) under
"ISA/PNP configuration" in your BIOS configuration
(usually accessed by pressing "Del" or "F2" during boot.
This will stop the BIOS from allocating this IRQ to a PCI
board in the PC.
This may also apply to other card types, if your card fails
to work properly, check "Windows NT Diagnostics" for a
possible IRQ conflict, ISA and PCI interrupts cannot be
shared.
If NT boots correctly and atdisk has started and all the
above seems ok, but your ATA disk is not assigned a
drive letter, go to the "Disk Administrator" and you
should be able to assign one there.
NOTE1... The standard Windows NT4 ATA disk driver
(atdisk.sys) only supports ONE PCMCIA ATA disk.
NOTE2...If a drive letter is not assigned to your
IBM-microdrive, go to...
http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/mdfalist.htm
NOTE3...Do not apply the IRQ9 "In Use by ISA" (above) fix
in Windows 2000 your PC may fail to boot.
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4.6 CardBus Adapters in Windows NT4.0
=====================================
The Windows NT4.0 PCMCIA drivers do not support
CardBus controllers and CardBus cards. In order to
support Windows NT 4.0, the PSeries drivers set
CardBus controllers to Legacy Intel 82365SL mode, this
allows only 16 bit PC-Cards to be used with CardBus
adapters in Windows NT4.
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4.7 IRQ 7 & 15
==============
The PSeries driver currently does not support IRQ
channels 7 & 15 when they are allocated to a PC-card
inserted in a PC-card socket. It is planned to add support
in a future release.
However, there is no problem with these IRQ's being used
as the PCI management interrupt allocated to the PCI
PCMCIA controller.
The 3rd party PC-Card software in Windows NT 4.0
may allocate IRQ channels 7 or 15 to your PCMCIA card,
leading to problems on configuration or during operation.
If you suspect this, apply the following workaround...
Award/Touchstone Cardware:
--------------------------
Cardware may try and allocate either of these two IRQ's,
so you must manually override use of IRQ's 7 & 15. This
is achieved in "Expert User Level", via the "Resource
Management" menu by adding IRQ7 and/or IRQ15 as
an excluded resource. Note that after doing this, you
must re-boot the PC before it will take effect.
You should also set CardWare into "polled mode" for
card status change (CSC) events as the CSC IRQ is not
supported.
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4.8 CardBus Adapter with the Multiprocessor kernel
==================================================
Windows NT4/2000 relies on the BIOS to setup IRQ's for
PCI cards. Windows NT uses this information to set up
the IOAPIC. Some BIOS's fail to assign an IRQ to a
CardBus adapter during boot as they consider they are
bridge devices not requiring an interrupt.
If this happens, the PSeries driver will fail to load. Contact
your BIOS manufacturer for a BIOS upgrade supporting
assignment of an IRQ to CardBus controllers.
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4.9 Windows 2000 Service Pack 1
===============================
For best operation, it is recommended that SP1 (or newer)
be installed.
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************************************************
5 Uninstalling the PSeries drivers
************************************************
The PSeries drivers are fully plug and play in that they
will detect the PCMCIA hardware will no load if the
PCMCIA hardware is not present in the PC. Usually it is
not necessary and not recommended to completly
uninstall the PSeries drivers. If the drivers are to be
completly removed, the following sections explain how to
remove the drivers for the particular operating system.
DON'T FORGET!!! THE PCMCIA HARDWARE WILL
FAIL TO OPERATE CORRECTLY WITHOUT THE
PSERIES DRIVERS INSTALLED!
5.1 Uninstalling the PSeries drivers in Windows 9x
==================================================
To uninstall the PSeries drivers, go to the "Control Panel",
run "Add/Remove Programs", select the PSeries Drivers
and click "Change/Remove".
Re-boot the computer into "Safe Mode" (by pressing "F8"
during boot). Double click the "System" icon in the control panel,
select "Device Manager" and expand the "PCMCIA socket" entry
highlight each entry for the PCMCIA socket and click "Remove".
From Windows Explorer delete the files:
c:\windows\inf\pseries.inf
c:\windows\inf\pseries.pnf
c:\windows\system\pseries.vxd
From Windows Explorer, go to the c:\windows\system\oldpcmcia
folder and move the "PCMCIA.INF" file to the c:\windows\inf folder.
Run the registry editor (regedit.exe) an delete the key:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet
\Services\VxD\PSeries"
Shut down the PC and remove the PC-Card adapter hardware.
Re-boot the PC and the driver is no longer installed.
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5.2 Uninstalling the PSeries drivers in Windows NT/2000
=======================================================
To uninstall the PSeries drivers, go to the "Control Panel",
run "Add/Remove Programs", select the PSeries Drivers
and click "Change/Remove".
Run the registry editor (regedit.exe) an delete the key:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PSeries"
From Windows Explorer delete the file:
c:\windows\system32\drivers\pseries.sys
Shut down the PC and remove the PC-Card adapter hardware.
Re-boot the PC and the driver is no longer installed.
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************************************************
6 Customer Technical Support
************************************************
For our latest product information see our web page
at http://www.pccard.co.uk/
If your problem does not appear here, have a look at our
FAQ pages at http://www.pccard.co.uk/support/pfaq.html
If you still have problems you should contact your hardware
vendor for support. Please assist them to support you by
supplying ALL of the following information, the more detail
you supply, the quicker it is likely they are able to give you
a solution.....
1) Make and model number of your PCMCIA adapter
2) Supplier of your PCMCIA adapter
3) The PSeries driver version you are using
4) Operating System and version (plus service pack etc)
5) PC/motherboard model and manufacturer
6) Motherboard chipset (i.e. 440BX etc)
7) BIOS manufacturer, version and serial number
8) Number of PCI slots on the motherboard
9) Number of ISA slots on the motherboard
10) Number of CPU's and type
11) CPU speed
12) Details of other PCI boards installed
13) Details of any ISA boards installed
14) Details of any motherboard peripherals
15) A complete list of ALL IRQ's allocation in the PC
16) Address and size of ALL memory resources allocated to the PCMCIA adapter
17) Address and size of ALL IO resources allocated to the PCMCIA adapter
18) IRQ number allocated to the PCMCIA adapter
19) Type, make and model number of any PCMCIA cards that are being used
20) Address and size of all memory/IO resources allocated to the PCMCIA card
21) IRQ number allocated to the PCMCIA card
22) A complete and exact description of the problem (please, please, please, not just "it doesn't work"!!)
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end.
Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
For more help, visit our Driver Support section for step-by-step videos on how to install drivers for every file type.