----------oOo---------- PSeries Driver 5.00 release notes IMPORTANT CONFIGURATION INFORMATION PLEASE READ CAREFULLY ----------oOo---------- 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. ************************************************ ----------oOo---------- 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 ----------oOo---------- 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 ----------oOo---------- 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! ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- ************************************************ 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. ----------oOo---------- 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). ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- ************************************************ 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" ----------oOo---------- 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" ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- 4.9 Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 =============================== For best operation, it is recommended that SP1 (or newer) be installed. ----------oOo---------- ************************************************ 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. ----------oOo---------- 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. ----------oOo---------- ************************************************ 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"!!) ----------oOo---------- 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.