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Sunday, November 09, 2003

Geekery ahoy. What else is new?

So. I have these two Lexar SmartMedia readers. One of them looks like this and has worked for me sans issue in OS 9 (dark ages) and OS X (well, Jaguar) for years now. It won't do diddly squat in Panther. The other one looks like this and I bummed it off my friend Heidi as a replacement for the one that won't do diddly squat in Panther. But it won't do diddly squat in Panther either (despite being listed on the iPhoto compatibility page). I am at a frickin' loss here, people. Neither will mount on my computer (although the second one DOES appear in the System Profiler) nor on Matty's. Lexar won't admit that the first device ever existed and will barely admit that there is such a thing as a Macintosh computer. Viking made a similar device to the first one called the Intelliflash and at one point I used its drivers (that might have been in OS 9, although my memory is kind of hazy), but they don't do anything in Panther. I've looked up about a dozen different SmartMedia readers online hoping to find another brand using the same innards and downloaded 4 or 5 associated drivers, but none of them do anything. Why the heck won't these work in Panther, how does one go about writing/editing/updating a kext file to reference what SHOULD be a Mass Storage-compatible device (I looked in the Image Capture SDK and this Apple developer page and it was all Greek to me), and why am I wasting my Sunday evening on something that should "just work"?? Can anyone recommend a small, reliable SmartMedia reader that will simply mount on the desktop in Panther so I can copy pictures off of it? I'm not interested in using iPhoto (too slow) and I don't really want to pay more than a few dollars (I already have TWO readers and I'd rather not pony up another $40 for another one that won't work) I'm really just posting this hoping that someone will find it whilst Googling and offer some info in the comments. Sigh.

Update: I knuckled under and got a Kensington reader instead. Voila, instant gratification, a week late. The "rotating cube" thingie in Image Capture is totally sex and I can't imagine ever MANUALLY dragging photo files around in the Finder again.

Posted at 07:30 PM

Comments

001. derek

hi, brian. it's derek from toronto (formerly of
sinister and nyc et al). i stumbled across yer blog this morning, having not been to joannou.net for quite some time. how's things?

as for your lexar reader - i have the latter
one you mentioned - the one you borrowed from heidi and haven't had any problems with it. it
worked in jaguar and is working in panther (my
scsi card no longer works, but that's another
story). have you tried using different USB
ports? do you have a hub you can try plugging
it into? it sucks having to deal with
workarounds until mac comes up with an update,
eh?

take care.

Posted at 10:47AM on Monday, November 10, 2003

002. heidi

do you still need the disk that came with the purple thing i gave you? come get it - the cats are beginning to think it's some new toy. yum yum.

Posted at 10:06AM on Friday, November 14, 2003

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