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reader/writer for older equipment (smart media card)

5K views 12 replies 5 participants last post by  cwwozniak 
#1 ·
I still use smart media cards for transferring designs from my laptop to an embroidery machine, manufactured in 2005. It cost $4000 and comparable ones today cost $8000. I can't upgrade my equipment; my equipment is for imaging but it's not a camera. I hope I'm in the right blog.
So, here's my question: I bought a brand new reader/writer by a company called Microtech, which (I since learned) no longer exists. I got it brand new from Amazon just 3 weeks ago, and it came with an installation disk but the instructions only apply to Windows ME and earlier. I have the disk in my laptop, but I don't see any installation setup. Can I just go ahead and plug the device into my USB port? Is there a patch or something I should install first (to enable Windows 8 to read this disk)?
I'm not handy with computers. I use it mostly for embroidery and shopping.
 
#3 ·
Thanks, Lozzy, but it didn't. Windows went online to search for a patch or something and came back to say it had found nothing for my device. The good news is that I also bought a plug-and-play reader-writer at the same time (because I know these are dated and I thought it would be safer to have a spare) and that works. I just finished copying 12 designs from my laptop to use in my embroidery machine.
Of course, I now have no spare, and I think I should buy another soon. (of the one that works...!)
 
#5 ·
You could try putting the installation disk into your laptop drive and plug in your usb card reader.Then go to the device manager and under universal service bus controllers find the one that has a yellow exclamation mark right click select properties then driver then update driver then browse my computer for driver software and navigate to your cd drive and if the driver is compatible the computer will install it.Once again no harm can be done if the driver is not right it just won't install.
 
#6 ·
Please give the specific model, all I could get from your first post was Microtech, a company out of business.

Notes for me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartMedia
1.SmartMedia cards came in two formats, 5 V and the more modern 3.3 V (sometimes marked 3 V), named for their main supply voltages.
2. SmartMedia memory cards are no longer manufactured. There have been no new devices designed for SmartMedia for quite a long time now.

I have my doubts that you will be able to get a smart media card reader working on a windows 8 computer.
 
#8 ·
Zio!
The cards I use in my embroidery machine are 3.3 SmartMedia cards. While I realize that technology is ancient now, I'm not going to spend $7,000 for a new machine that will also be out of date long before it wears out or stops working well. There are reader/writers for these cards, new in the package, leftover....I just bought 2. The only one that works is a plug-and-play that worked out of the box without a disk in Windows 8. It would still be nice to get the Zio! working, to have as a backup, because they are now so hard to find. It's deplorable that Amazon sold it to me, since it only works with Windows 2000 and earlier!
 
#10 ·
I think these are the files you're asking for:
Device USB\VID_04E6&PID_0003\6&219c3ee1&0&4 was configured.

Driver Name: null
Class Guid: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Driver Date:
Driver Version:
Driver Provider:
Driver Section:
Driver Rank: 0x0
Matching Device Id:
Outranked Drivers:
Device Updated: false

That's all it says. Not much to go on.
 
#12 ·
Does that forum/drivers I pointed out help??
You may need to tell it to use the drivers anyway as the codes are different.
Windows uses the VID/PID to identify a device. Drivers for the code your device supplies were never written for Win7, BUT drivers for those other very similar devices were written and should work.
Let us know!
 
#13 ·
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