PC Card External FDD Driver Source

[jaugu...@verizon.net]

Hi,

A friend wants to give me a Compaq 190563-001 PC card (PCMCIA) external
FDD (3.5"), but he does NOT have the driver.

I searched the web and http://members.driverguide.com without success.

Does anyone know of a source?

Thank You in advance, John

[Paul]

A search came up dry.

Someone was having trouble finding a driver
for this... in the year 2003. And now it's
that much harder to do.

You can do "integration by parts".

With PCMCIA card inserted, use a "lspci" type utility
to ascertain the chip type inside the metallic PCMCIA
adapter. Maybe it's a Canon Parallel Port chip.

Using the VID/PID or VEN/DEV, then hunt down all
possible sources of drivers for that. Maybe
someone other than COmpaq sold such cards and
still offers a driver.

The next step is examination of the floppy drive.
Who makes it ? Does it use a standard floppy cable
and signal count ? Is there such a thing as a
parallel port floppy cable ? Is the drive by Mitsumi ?
Look for branding info, or model info.

It this is a really bad bodge (historically not done
for more than a couple years), then the technique to
use it might be lost in time. If the drive happened
to use a "standard" interface, then perhaps nothing
need be done other than acquire the PCMCIA driver
of correct type.

If I can't even find a hint or a whiff of a driver
design, it's pretty hard to guess where to start
looking. Using visual clues, or the equivalent of
"lspci", you may find a second manufacturer of the
thing, who left more breadcrumbs behind before croaking.

Paul