CF 52 usb 3.0 Expresscard

CF 52 mk4, Win7 32bit.

I tried a no name Expresscard version with an Asmedia chip. The included driver was ancient.
It occasionally blue screened. And I could frequently hear the ding dong Windows sound of connecting and disconnecting hardware.

I just ordered this one with a NEC chip. StarTech ECUSB3S254F
Startech has current drivers and firmware available. I am waiting for it to arrive. I will post my results when it gets here.
I chose the models I did because they both have the 5VDC power port plug between the 2 usb ports. Mainly I want to use usb sticks so power should not be a problem with them. Any other device should probably have the external 5VDC connected.

 

Looking to hear how it works. Might be a perfect for my CF-53 MK1

 

I did find an updated driver for the Asmedia card. That seemed to stop the blue screens but it still connected and disconnected randomly.

Maybe that's a Windows thing? Power management or something.
I ought to send the no name version to a Linux user to test.

 

I have a card like that rolling around here,I think it was in a Lenovo that passed thru.

 

The no name or the StarTech?

 

Don't know what it is,I will dig it out and post a photo if I can find it.

 

Can't find it so far,found the smart card reader but the search continues.

 

okie dokie.
My search for sanity continues.

 

Let me know what you find,I could use a little myself.

 

yeah ... everywhere i look , they are fresh out .
aint none on back order either .

 

I have a USB 3.0 Express card. Not sure for the model but I don't actually use it because there is a serious issue with it - it drains power from the laptop battery even when the laptop is turned off

 

Can you post a photo?
What model laptop?

 

Card came yesterday.

Renesas uPD720200 chip. (NEC)
I found newer drivers and firmware. Driver version 2.1.39.0
Firmware version 3034
Drivers and firmware were at station-drivers.com. Odd site to navigate, but the files seem clean.

It was disconnecting and reconnecting until I found and installed the newest driver. It also installed a Renesas utility. I opened the utility and it had a checkbox to disable usb 3 power management. I clicked the box. I then updated the firmware and it needs a reboot. I am downloading a large file at the moment so the reboot will need to wait a bit.

Stay tuned.

 

I can't find the one I had,I'm betting I gave it away. Or option #2 that I have way too much crap in my workshop.

 

"Or option #2 that I have way too much crap in my workshop"

"survey says ...!"

 

Hi there, newbie here.

I recently entered Toughbook territory by getting my hands on a CF52-PFN32PE and obtained a USB3.0 Express card from Amazon ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/CSL-SuperS...70859617&sr=1-56&keywords=usb+3.0+expresscard)

It works fine and has (briefly) reached a speed of 71mb/s but seems to get rather warm in a short space of time so therefore I remove it as soon as finished.

What are your thoughts on continuing use?

I have further questions to ask about my new found friend but will open other threads.

Glad I found this site.

 

I have not had much time to further investigate mine.
I did notice that it was getting warm even with nothing plugged into it.
I want to check into it more. I want to check into the power management. I have a generic card I am going to send to a friend who is a Linux guy. I want to find out how these cards work under Linux.

I pulled out my card until I need to use it. At least until I gather more info on the power.

 

Yeah, same as mine - even with nothing plugged into it, it still gets warm. Hence I remove it once I've done what I need to do.

 

"warm" is a relative term ... just as the "normal" cycle on a washing machine .
a rule of thumb :
if you can keep the tip of your index finger on the surface comfortably for 10 seconds , chances are that the temperature is ok .
the best way is to look up the operating specifications and use a thermometer to see if the device is in the ballpark .

 

This is about Thinkpads but they are all Intel chipset based after all, nice writeup here:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=110163

I have the AKE on order to try in a T601 Frankenpad, and my CF51 MK3. "The chip used is the Renesas uPD720202 – the updated version of the uPD720200. Renesas claims improvement in both read and write speeds, with the write speed increase being more dramatic."
Item number 221996644372 on ebay.

Issues with the AKE are discussed here with solutions:
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=108201
viewtopic.php?p=702162#p702162

 

Great info PeteB77.

Cut//paste from that write up.


PCIe Power Management (ASPM)

The PCI-Express standard defines specifications for Active State Power Management (ASPM), which allows reducing power consumption of PCIe devices when they are idle. Two main power-saving states are defined – L0s, which the devices are supposed to enter during short idle periods, and L1, which is entered during longer idle periods, and offers, in theory, more power savings.

Reducing power consumption is naturally more important in mobile systems, so most laptops will have the ASPM (sometimes referred to as “PCIe Power Management”) enabled by default on their PCIe ports, ExpressCard included. But really it depends on the BIOS, and often there is a setting which can disable/enable it.

Without going into too many details, I was somewhat surprised to find that all these ExpessCard adapters do not seem to play well with ASPM, and specifically with the L0s setting. With L0s enabled, I witnessed any of the following phenomena, depending on the card and the machine:

• Significant (up to 50%) drop in read speeds
• The controller not being detected at all or appearing and disappearing randomly
• Terrible system sluggishness as Windows tries to repeatedly negotiate with the controller and fails

It seems that the uPD720202 was affected more than the others, because for whatever reason, L0s was being enabled on it by default, whereas for the other controllers it would not. I have not managed to conclude if it is a bug in the controller, or the chipset, or any of their drivers, but it would make the device sometimes downright unusable. So far the workaround that works 100% is to disable L0s on the device as well as on the PCIe root port for the ExpressCard. This can be achieved in one of two ways:

• Disabling PCIe Power Management altogether in the BIOS (does not seem to work on the T60, but does work on the newer models). This may have a negative impact on your battery life.
• Using scripts and utilities such as pciutils (Linux/Windows) or RWEverything (Windows) to disable L0s specifically for the ExpressCard, when the system boots/exits from standby.

More cut//paste

The issue has been root-caused, and there is a solution (or a workaround, if you will).

The culprit turns out to be power management features on the PCIe root ports which the ExpressCard is connected to.

There are two power management features each PCIe port is capable of supporting as per the ASPM (Active State Power Management) specification : L0s (shallow sleep) and L1 (deeper sleep). They are both designed to be entered automatically when the device is active, but idle (hence the name).

By default, the BIOS (at least on the T60 and probably on others), enables the ASPM features during boot enumeration for every root port that has a device behind it.

A small side note: It appears that the "PCI Power Management" option in the BIOS has no effect whatsoever. Maybe on T60 it only affects legacy PCI devices. Or maybe it's a bug. I understand that later models have "PCI Express Power Management" option in the BIOS - I haven't verified if it has any effect.

However, if the device was not present during boot, and was only plugged in later, the OS (at least XP and/or Fedora 14) will not enable the ASPM on the parent port.

For whatever reason, the Renesas controllers do not play well with L0s. Read speeds suffer as I described above. Since L0s will be enabled if and only if the card was plugged in at boot, this explains exactly the phenomenon.

It is possible to change the ASPM settings on the fly using a utility that can write to PCI Config Space. Examples are RWEverything or the Linux setpci utility. A Windows port of the linux utility can be downloaded here.

Note that the L0s needs to be turned off on the parent PCIe port, not on the USB controller itself. Specifically for the Intel 82801 PCIe Root Port (what I have on the T60), the relevant PCI config space register is 0x50.By default, the device will come up with the value of 0x50 set to 0x43. According to lspci, the first bit controls the L0s feature. Writing 0 to it (i.e., changing the register value to 0x42) will disable L0s, and it appears that it is this exact bit that affects the read speeds. The second bit controls the L1, and seems to have no effect.

For other PCIe root ports, the relevant config address (it is the first byte of the LnkCtl block) may differ, but lspci can help you pinpoint it using the -vvv and -xxx parameters. In any case, for the QM57/67 chipsets on later models it seems to be the same offset.

Since setpci is a command-line utility, it is possible to have it run automatically at startup and disable L0s on the relevant PCIe root port.

Another side note:
According to this presentation, L0s is required by the spec, whereas L1 is required specifically for ExpressCards. However, this one, specifically slide 27, suggests the opposite - L1 must be enabled for all PCIe modules, and for ExpressCard, additionally L0s. The lspci claims that indeed the latter is what is taking place - L1 is enabled for all root ports - those hosting the ExpressCard, the LAN and the WLAN. L0s is enabled specifically for the ExpressCard root port (and causes the problem). So it looks like the BIOS was implemented according to the guidelines, and it's either the root port or the controller that doesn't play nice with the specification requirements. I might research more into it later, but in the meanwhile I am pleased with the workaround that allows the USB3 controller to work at full speed.

 

They talk about the T60 Thinkpad which is based on the same, Napa, chipset as
the CF-51 MK3. There could be BIOS differences but the fix should probably
work for the CF-51 and many others.

If you get any cards based on the uPD720202 working a step by step for the fix
would be a lot of help.

 

Here's mine card. It's always hot when the computer is on (like described above). I think that it drains power even when the computer is turned off (my battery falls from full to zero for one week when the card is in and the computer is off).