M6500 - Panasonic P2 Card / Realtek WHCI / Windows 7 x64

Here's a strange one for you guys. I need some help ironing out what the hell is going on.

If you're not familiar with Panasonic P2 cards, they are basically just flash memory storage in the form of a Cardbus card, designed for broadcast cameras. They are supposed to mount in any standard Cardbus slot and mount as a drive letter of removable storage.

After a clean install of Windows 7 (with all system drivers up to date), I went to install the Panasonic P2 Driver package from their site. During this process, the installer copies all files and then prompts you to insert a card. Doing so detects hardware and is supposed to install the driver. However, for me, I got a BSOD caused by the file RTWHCI.sys. This file is narrowed down to the device in Device Manager called "Realtek WHCI" under the category "UWBPCI".

So, just for kicks, I disabled this device and inserted the P2 card and reloaded the driver with the Have Disk method, and IT WORKS! Simultaneously, I got a couple more yellow bangs on different devices in Device Manager. The first is the Dell Wireless 365 Bluetooth Module. Does this require the UWB 420 to function?

The second is the Logitech Unifying USB Receiver, which I installed using the mPCIe slot as demonstrated here. Funny thing is... the mouse still works.

When I view devices by connection, the UWB stuff is under PCIe Root Port 6. The Dell 365 and Logitech USB Receiver are under USB Host Controller. The P2 card is under the PCI Bridge and the TI PCI8412 controller. So why do they interfere with one another?

Is this an unlucky case of incompatible hardware? Or is there a driver at fault here that needs to be fixed?

Is the UWB card worth keeping? I don't even have any UWB devices or know what is out there that's worth a damn.

I can provide more info. This is just a run-down of the case in a nutshell. Any ideas would be great!

 

UWB 420 seems to have to do with WWAN and GPS, and so the link to Bluetooth is understandable, as well as your Logitech Unifying USB Receiver (which you installed in the WWAN slot, as I recall). I can't explain the interference, though.

 

Well, the WWAN slot is just a mini PCIe slot. I don't think the system designates it as WWAN specifically.

 

Hard to say. I'd say it might, because I don't know that you could expect to be able to put a mini-PCIe WWAN card anywhere else and have it work. The point being that they may have extra lines to that slot (similar to how the mini-SSD slot has SATA lines hooked up to the mini-PCIe slot there) to accommodate the WWAN card, and since you've disabled the driver, the slot is no longer usable as a WWAN card-slot, which explains the bang; although your receiver still works because it doesn't actually use the disabled WWAN lines. This is all just speculation, of course. I don't have any detailed specifications for how that slot is wired or anything.

 

I'm not disabling WWAN. WWAN is for something like a Sprint 3G card. I am disabling the UWB 420 card, which is one of the quarter-height cards. As far as I know the WWAN and UWB cards all conform to mini PCIe standards, which does include USB and SATA connections, whether they are used or not.

I might take out the UWB card and see what happens. The better question is... what the hell does the "Realtek WHCI" device do, which shows up differently than the UWB Radio.

 

Hm, oh sorry, I was remembering an old conversation in the M6500 thread where someone was complaining about the UWB 420 card being missing, and then later said that they were looking for the WWAN card. I went back and just found that conversation, so my confusion is cleared up a bit. It says UWB 420 has something to do with wireless USB... I don't think I've ever seen a product that actually requires wireless USB, so I have no idea what may or may not be an issue at that point.

Edit - WHCI appears to stand for Wireless Host Controller Interface, so it may be some sort of "unified" driver that is intended to handle all wireless and radio communications that aren't specifically network related (or maybe even network related).

 

I'm leaving out the UWB adapter for now. There is a good deal of confusion as to whether this is really UWB or Wireless USB, and a lot of sources claim they are NOT the same. I have no idea, but I'll have the card when/if I need it.

The P2 card still conflicts with the Bluetooth 365 driver, but it does mount OK. The only thing that is weird is that it mounts in read-only mode.