Vaio VPCZ12AHX/XQ USB 3.0

Hi Guys

I am new to this excellent forum and I am sorry if this is asked earlier.

Last year almost about 12 months ago I bought the VPCZ12AHX/XQ from a L.A Sony Style shop, I paid almost 5000$ for it as it was the top of the line product with highest specs.

VPCZ12AHX/XQ | VAIO® Signature Collection Z Series | Sony | Sony Style USA

It's working fine till last week, where some of my KEYS on my Keyboard stopped functioning out of sudden..

I don't live in the USA , so I went to my Local Sony Vaio service and they told me my Keyboard is U.S. Layout and they only have the European Layout (which has less keys and needs a complete palm rest change) so I decided to dismantle it myself to see if I can fix the keyboard or not. I cleaned the keyboard and checked all the connections but I could not find any physical errors. But the error continues so I ordered myself the U.S. Layout Keyboard from USA .

Since I learned how to dismantle my VPCZ1 now , I decided to upgrade to USB 3.0 on one of my USB ports.

Do you guys know how to change to USB 3.0 Port on the Vaio VPCZ1 series, a detailed help will be duly appreciated.

Thanking you in advance.....

 

You don't need to open up the laptop if you want to add a USB3.0 port. You get an additional, full power port with a 15$ shipped expresscard-to-usb3.0 adapter. Flush fit cards are available.

I got this one here:
AKE expresscard Express To 1 Port USB 3.0 BC618 5Gbps | eBay

With the drivers from my post here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...s-esata-expresscard-review-5.html#post7035926

Works great FWIW and does not distract working on the machine. Can be left plugged in while being on the road.

-----------------------------
Now for the hardware hackers:

If you want to replace one of the Z's usb ports to a usb3.0 port, you need a USB3.0 host controller. I advise you to replace the card reader daughterboard featuring the RICOH card reader/ IEEE1394 controller with a homebrew PCB with a Renesas / Fresco Logic USB 3.0 controller soldered on. This connects to the PCIe interface that leads to the daughterboard via a ribbon cable. It replaces the front USB port / i.link port at the left side. You can also solder a USB hub on that board to hook up the card readers again.

 

You can't upgrade the Z1's guts to get USB 3, you'll need to get one of the adapters like pyr0 linked above

 

Please read the 'hardware hackers' part

You can, but it is somewhat cheaper to get a plug&play aftermarket expresscard.

 

Thanks Guys

As far as I understand , it is possible to upgrade the USB port to 3.0 internally on the VPCZ1 series but its more expensive.

Can you tell me about how much would it cost, since I already paid a lot money for this VPCZ1 , I dont mind paying an extra.

In your other first method I understand it is possible with a Flash card and it is much cheaper.

One question where do I plug the Flash Fit card, is it on left side of the computer just next to the bottom USB port ?

Do you have a picture of yours installed ?

 

Solder !!!!, I think I better stick to Flash Card method

Look when it comes to "HTC" hacking, Rooting , S OFF ing, I can do, but when it comes to PC and Soldering , I don't understand nothing on how to do it. I better stick to Flash Card method then

 

^ There is no *product* available that adds USB3 to the internals. It's in the idea stage and requires engineering of the PCB and manufaturing of the boards with electronics. This takes plenty of work to do and some electronic components. Altogether, I think a ready to run custom made board will at least cost 10-20 times a plain USB3.0 expresscard adapter (100-300$). This strongly depends on how many people would buy such a board. The more, the cheaper for all. I thought about building one for me since my ExpressCard slot is occupied by my eGPU most of the time, but building a single board does not seem to be worth the trouble.

The card plugs between the two USB ports on the left side. There is a plastic tray that you can push in so it gets released. How it will look, see here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/513653-esata-vpc-z-s-y-series-esata-expresscard-review.html

The pictures there are with eSATA cards, the USB 3.0 cards look exactly the same just with a USB3.0 jack.

 

Wow , you had it worked out already .... Thanks for the infos ....

I have already ordered the AKE from the link you gave me, I asked the seller to ship it by UPS or DHL to receive it quicker.

I understand that AKE will stick out just a few milimetres, but so what ?, at least I will be able to transfer data from my Vaio and into my Vaio much faster.

Currently I have a WD My Book 3.0 Hard disk which supports USB 3.0 , so I am willing to transfer my old files into my VPCZ1 much quicker with your method.

One think I don't understand is, what I will do with those drivers on your first post to me? Do I have to install those drivers into my Vaio in order to make Vaio transfer faster or what ?

P.S. If you ever think of making your own USB 3.0 Express Adapter, I can be your first customer ........!!!!!!

 

You need to install these drivers in order to make the AKE USB3.0 expresscard work. The CD that comes with the card has old drivers that do have issues, so I surfed the internet and got the newest driver set.

Good luck, report back with speedtests.

 

@Pyro:

Thanks for your many contributions to the Z community. (Now, he's wondering, what does he want to ask me for? lol - nothing! Sincere; you do so many things to benefit to many of us. Reps go only so far as gratitude.)

To business:

I just received my AKE - having used an Iogear 2-port one that required additional power - and am trying to decide which drivers to use. Note a comment that was the last made in your thread on EC eSata/USB thread (below) which suggested that the driver you created gave him problems and he found another that worked better, and, curiously, then said he found the one that came with the AKE was better. Would you please just comment as to your response to the post below? Thanks again.

To avoid confustion, everything from here to the bottom of this post is pasted from the other thread, the final post on it, from 1/2011, other than my own sig line at the very bottom:

Re: eSATA on VPC-Z (and S/Y series) - an eSATA ExpressCard Review <hr style='color:#EEEEEE' size='1'> Quote:

Originally Posted by pyr0 Yes of course, this is for Win7 x64. (See the included .inf file) Sorry I forgot to mention that. (For me it is kinda clear that most users here including me use win7 x64.)

[UPDATE]

I just tried pyr0's driver but while I was transferring some files (big files like 2 gigs) it crashed my Z.
Also I've checked the driver version number and what I have is more recent so I've uploaded it online.
I re-installed the driver I got on my CD and now it is functioning ok for now I think. (hope?)

Here is the LINK

@pyr0:
How are you able to get much more transfer speed? Is there anything else you did to optimize your system?
I get around anywhere between 50~80 MB depends on the express card's mood(?) I think. hehe
I am thinking to buy another express card to see if I will get better result with more expensive models ( THIS)
__________________
Sony Vaio Z124GX/B | i5-520m | nVidia 330m 1gb | 8gb DDR 3 | 256gb Toshiba SSD RAID-0

 

I ordered the 3.0USB card from two different sellers just incase . One of them replied just now saying that China is at National Holidays and can ship earliest 8th October by DHL , I guess I will have to wait a little longer to report the speed tests.

P.S. If you ever feel like making your own 3.0USB Express Adapter , I am also in with you .

 

If you find 5+ other Z1 owners, I will ask our PCB etching and assembly company for pricing.

 

Bump - @Pyro, could you take a look at this and comment? Thanks.

 

Please upload a picture showing a HDTune Benchmark on your drive. The speed depends on the HDD and controller in the external HDD enclosure. I got huge deviations between different enclosures with the same HDD. 60-80MB/s average sequential read speed should be doable with any 5400 rpm drive. In that range, you are certainly not bottlenecked by the EC interface.

No special optimizations here. Switch off WiFi and unplug additional USB devices while benchmarking since they take bandwidth from the bus and slow down transfer speed.

 

accidental duplicate post. sorry

 

Sorry, I was concerned that my post would cause confusion, though I tried to explain. Once more: the report of problems using your drivers and better success with other AKE drivers linked in the post I pasted from the other thread did not happen to me! I have yet to install my AKE; I just got it and am presently running an Iogear 2 port EC/USB3 adapter. I was asking what you thought about the person's post, the last one on the other thread, which apparently you hadn't seen, as the poster directed questions directly at you. And, important: I am only interested in what you think about his contention that his linked drivers are newer than yours, and if you think I may as well use them instead. I really should have said that I'm not concerned with his questions about speed issues, as I have done plenty of testing with several drives and run HD Tunes on them.

I'm thinking that I'm over-thinking this . I just like to get it right the first time if possible, and this poster seemed to have newer info/drivers than yours and wonder if you have written files > 2GB+ without incident and, further, if you think the driver he claims is newer than yours, may actually be reducing his transfer rates.

If nothing I've said leads you to any additional input, I'll know by the absence of another response

 

I'll check the 'newer' drivers that are actually just 38 days newer with my AKE card and let you know soon.

I'll extract a clean driverset and rewrite my guide posting for your convenience and to get most out of the USB 3.0 card.

 

youda man. Sorry I was so clumsy asking the question.

 

Does it actually sit flush or does the bottom half stick out a little bit due to the Z's chassis shape?

 

Each standard-formfactor expresscard sticks out 3-4mm from the slot. The slot is just a tiny bit too short and the chassis is slightly curved so a card does not sit absolutely flush. If you watch from the side, the aluminium baseplate (keyboard plate) is a little bit wider tho, so from the outside look and feel the card sits quite flush. However, the card plugged in does not interfere handling the laptop at all (similar to a micro usb plug i.e. a wireless mouse receiver) and can be left plugged in when you put the laptop into your bag or briefcase.

See pictures in this thread to get an idea how it looks.

 

Just wanted to mention that I installed my AKE EC/USB3 port last night with Pyro's drivers and it works like a charm. 75mb/s sequential read. No auxiliary power needed - using Iomega 1 TB portable drive.. A very happy camper.

 

Awesome! Glad it works for you!

 

Hallo pyr0

I received my AKE EXPRESS USB 3.0 CARD



Well I actually received it a week ago but while I was riding my mountain bike a car hit me from the back of bicycle and I was injured for a week at home.

So now I have the time to try it.

I have installed the driver you mentioned FRESCO LOGIC FL1000 USB 3.0
"install64bit.msi"

The install went OK, but I guess I made an error somewhere . When I plug in my USB 3.0 WD HDD into the AKE Card , I can not see the USB 3.0 WD HDD on my computer, once plugged in I can hear the WD HDD working ( fan noise) but I can not see a new DRIVER on my PC .

Can you tell me where I went wrong ?

P.S. I never installed the original cd came with the product, I installed your driver first (FRESCO LOGIC FL1000 USB 3.0 "install64bit.msi"


EDIT : I JUST GOT IT TO WORKING , LET ME TEST HOW IT GOES , I WILL INFORM SOON

 

Here are my speed results



Check the Box on the right side , I copied some files from my WD 3.0USD HDD into my Vaio, it was my e-mail files of 17GB with 6539 Files and 39 Folders , the average speed was around 55MB-60MB/sec

Secondly , I have copied 13.7GB of Pictures and Videos from my WD USB 3.0HDD into my Vaio , the average speed was around 50mb-55mb/sec

These speed for sure around 4-5x are faster than my old times , but still I can not catch the 117mb/sec speeds you managed.

Am I doing something wrong or is this speed good enough when transferring such too many files ?

Thank you again.

 

Ok, here is my Benchmark Result as pry0 requested



So can you tell me if these are satisfactory results or not

Thnx

 

AND FINALLY

After some fiddling around , I learned that my WD USB 3.0 HD has an update, I have installed the update and here is latest Benchmark Results



After the upgrade of the WD 3.0 HD , my average increased to 104,9MB/SEC from 81.4MB/SEC

I think this is a great increase, however I still do not know if these results are satisfactory enough.

 

^ I can assure you, you are getting excellent speeds with the AKE EC USB3 card. At this point, the speed is limited by the external drive you are using; the AKE is clearly performing as designed. If I was you, I would stop right now and consider yourself ahead of the game.

 

Hi

I took your advice and stopped already, now I am considering myself already ahead of the competition. Thanks

 

Did you ever manage to resolve your keyboard problem?

 

Yes, I ordered the keyboard from E-Bay , seller is from Hong Kong or China

But, although they said it is brand new , it felt like it had been used

So I bought another one telling them "look this time you MUST send me Brand new one" they sent me a brand new keyboard but it looked like it had been used as well.

But the problem is over now , just replaced the keyboard although new keyboard is not as perfectly lit as the original one.

 

Can anybody tell me WHY THE TOSHIBA EXTERNAL HD 3.0USB that I bought today is NOT working ?

Its a USD 3.0 Toshiba STOR.E Partner

It feels like it is NOT getting enough electricity , it gets turned on and my Vaio finds the new Drive but then they loose contact between each other.

Any solution on what to do ? Could it be that this External HDD has no seperate electricity plug and so it can not get enough power to turn on ?

When I plug it into my normal USB 2.0 ports, it is working normally.

Also please tell me if I need to update the drivers of the AKE EC USB3 card

 

I bought an AKE USB 3.0 card - it only seems to work with some external hard drives. It works with one 2.5" USB3.0 SATA enclosure I bought, but does not work with a different 2.5" USB 3.0 SATA enclosure. It doesn't work with any of my 2.5" USB 2.0 enclosures, and makes strange clicking sounds when I connect them (with sounds similar to your problem). However, it works fine with my 3.5" USB 2.0 enclosures and with USB sticks. All very odd.

 

Sounds like lack of power.

 

Is there any NEW DRIVERS for the AKE 3.0 USB Card ?

Maybe if we update the drivers the problem will be solved.

But I agree the problem looks like a lack of enough power to power up the 2.5" Toshiba Extrnal Drive.

Do you know if there is a cable which has 2 USB plugs and on plug to connect to the Extrnal Drive ? There used to be such cables to power up the USB 2.0 External Drivers in the past. I think we might need a cable like that but this time compatible with USB 3.0

 

Is your card one of the following?


www.station-drivers.com/page/renesas.htm
www.station-drivers.com/page/asmedia.htm

My old card was a buggy asmedia (needed to put the computer into standby mode before plugging any drives in), but my renesasa/nec card is much better.

 

AKE card has a Fresco Logic FL100 chipset (unless they changed the hardware layout). Most up to date driver here:

http://nbtsd.asustreiber.de/USB3.0/FLUSB3.0-3.5.56.0.rar

 

I have the 2-port AKE USB 3.0 card which uses the NEC Reneas uPD720201 chipset. I have updated the drivers and firmware but no help. As you say, it's probably a power problem. Perhaps I should have bought the single-port version (though the problems I have are with only one thing plugged in).

 

Let me try this new driver, maybe it makes a difference or at least maybe my transfer speeds would increase .

 

Hi pyr0

I had a major Vaio problem and my VPZC12AHX was at the Sony Service for 2 weeks, and they gave me back my Vaio completely formatted and resetted to factory settings. On your last post you mentioned the above link was the latest driver but when I click this link I get a "NOT FOUND The requested URL /USB3.0/FLUSB3.0-3.5.56.0.rar was not found on this server". ERROR

Can you pls send me the latest driver for the AKE EXPRESS USB 3.0 CARD 5GPS BC618

 

I want one.

I have noticed that some of the expresscard USB 3.0 ports have a power socket for additional power, usually drawn from a USB port but you could use a wall wart as well. I'm having trouble sourcing a flush version in India - the Transcend PNU-3 sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb.

 

Hi anytimer!

I'm afraid you'll find Pyr0's offer was from 2011 - not likely to be current.

I have been using Pyr0's home grown drivers from this thread in 2011 since I acquired my AKE USB 3.0 ExpressCard (single port, no additional power needed) and it continues to provide 5gb/s throughput ever since. I don't know if the same ExpressCard USB 3.0 port is made so that's a caveat. The nice thing about this is that the EC only protrudes about 2mm from the slot. Good luck. Jeff

 

I'm only finding the dual port version.

NEW Express Card 34/54 To 2 USB 3.0 Port Adapter Expresscard 5 Gbps D3

Anyone has feedback about this?

Would this be a better bet? Additional power?

http://www.amazon.com/ExpressCard-Adapter-5Gbps-External-Power/dp/B0079DNGYS/ref=pd_cp_pc_3

 

The second link seems to go to a card that is virtually identical to the single port AKE from a few years back. It appears to run on the same Fresco driver, that may or may work as well as the one Pyr0 wrote. Reading the owner comments, most said they did not need the auxiliary power cord. If sending back returns is not difficult in India, you might order both and see which works better. Still, my money is on the second one. Good luck and keep us posted!

 

I bought one of these AKE 2-port USB 3.0 expresscard adapters for my Z11 a few years ago. Two problems:
- very difficult to plug in (there was a long discussion about it many years ago) - something seems to catch inside the port. You have to squeeze it with pliers first.
- it only worked with a small subset of USB 3.0 devices (typically those that have their own power). It didn't seem to provide enough power for the device, and that was just with one device plugged in - plugging in two devices caused nothing to be recognised.

Maybe their drivers and the hardware have improved since a couple of years ago, but if not, I would not recommend the AKE 2-port card.

 

Ok. So:
2 ports, no additional power is bad.
2 ports with additional power is better.
1 port, no additional power might work.
1 port with additional power seems to be the best bet.

What about chipsets? Do they all work - more or less?

 

AAARGH!!! Amazon says: We're sorry. This item can't be shipped to your selected destination. You may either change the shipping address or delete the item from your order.