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kbonnel

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 1, 2004
481
4
In a nice place..
So, I had a firewire PCMCIA card, and popped it into my Powerbook. Is there anything I have todo remove "safely" remove it? I can't find anything that I can click on to tell OSX to stop using it.

Kimo
 
i had a ethernet card on my old pb5300, From what i rember I had to drag the cards icon on the desktop into the trash and the card poped out the slot
 
There should be small hole next to the PCMCIA slot that, if a card gets stuck, you can insert a paper clip into the hole and it will eject the card. Used to have to do this all the time with my Unofficial Cardbus enabled 3400/Kanga.
 
Just Eject it using the button. You only have to tell the computer to stop accessing drives/Memory Cards connected by draging them to the trash. Unlike Windows, the system is designed for plug and play.

SO JUST PUSH THE BUTTON

TEG
 
More Tips

If you have a FireWire device plugged into the card, and you have a program open that uses the FireWire device (Toast, audio applications, iMovie) you might want to disconnect the device/quit the program first.

If you have a hard disk mounted (iPod) you should unmount it first. Then you can safely pop out the card.

Under Mac OS X there may be data left in a memory cache that is not saved to disk yet and popping out the PC card with a mounted drive or device may cause unexpected behaviors in the device or the software later on.

Despite the best intentions of designers of "hot swappable" devices, the electricity flowing through a circuit and wiring can still short out a PHY or other circuits when unplugging "live" devices on a FireWire bus.

If anyone wants to be a millionaire: developed a plug that safely cuts off the electricity when you squeeze it to unplug/plug a FireWire or USB device's cable.
 
Well, I guess it isn't all that plug and play :(

So, I just pushed the button, and it cause OSX to hang. I had to power off my PB. I guess I could try an goto sleep first, and see if that does anything. And I didn't have anything running off it. I had tried it in the past (running 10.3.3, and it caused the system to crash). I was hoping that 10.3.4 might have fixed it..

Oh well.

FYI, in case you wanted to know, it is just some cheap firewire pcmcia card.

Kimo
 
kbonnel said:
So, I just pushed the button, and it cause OSX to hang. I had to power off my PB. I guess I could try an goto sleep first, and see if that does anything. And I didn't have anything running off it. I had tried it in the past (running 10.3.3, and it caused the system to crash). I was hoping that 10.3.4 might have fixed it..
Oh well.
FYI, in case you wanted to know, it is just some cheap firewire pcmcia card.
Kimo

Huh, who makes your firewire card (need to file in don't buy list)?
Second question would be, what powerbook are you using? They've had built in firewire since the Pismo, so you could buy a firewire hub?

-Wyrm
 
Wyrm said:
Huh, who makes your firewire card (need to file in don't buy list)?
Second question would be, what powerbook are you using? They've had built in firewire since the Pismo, so you could buy a firewire hub?

-Wyrm

I know from experience that some high-bandwidth devices don't like being chained into the firewire bus. You need to run them on separate firewire busses. Luckily, the built-in firewire is on it's own bus separate from the PCMCIA slots. So you can put in a firewire card in the PCMCIA slot, attach the high-bandwidth device to it and still use external storage on the built-in firewire.
 
TEG said:
Just Eject it using the button. You only have to tell the computer to stop accessing drives/Memory Cards connected by draging them to the trash. Unlike Windows, the system is designed for plug and play.

SO JUST PUSH THE BUTTON

TEG

That's exactly how Windows XP works too (except instead of dragging to the Trash, you tell it to safe eject the device from the system tray; or in my case on my laptop, just press Fn+F9 and it's all taken care of)

Did you just feel like Windows bashing today or are you not a cross-platform individual and don't understand how things work? Windows is just as plug-in-play as MacOS X (probably more so because there are more devices supported on Windows; no criticism of MacOS X, just a matter of fact due to the larger market share)
 
I have no idea who makes the card, it is very generic. I really don't need it, but it was there, so I decided to play. I am using a PB15 1.5.

Kimo
 
kbonnel said:
I have no idea who makes the card, it is very generic. I really don't need it, but it was there, so I decided to play. I am using a PB15 1.5.
Kimo

Hmmm. I guess it's a lesson in practicing safe peripheraling. Toss it then, there are real firewire cards that work with OS X.

-Wyrm
 
Bumped - OSX won´t "allow" me to eject my PCMCIA ("still in use")

I have a PCMCIA adaptor to view compact flash cards - I just started using it on my G4 PB. It goes in fine, acts as I expect (shows up as "NO NAME" in Finder), but when I try to tell the computer to eject it (before just pushing the button to physically remove it), the computer tells me it´s still in use and I have to close the application and try again. The thing is, all apps ARE closed. I tried dragging to to the trash, clicking on the little grey eject symbol, but nothing works. When I then just push the button on the side of the PB to eject it physically, I get the usual warning that that wasn´t a good thing to do. What gives??
 
you get an Icon in the menubar, click on it and there you can stop a device (it worked on my Ti-Powerbook...) and then its powered off and you schould be able to safely remove it... and indeed just pushing the button worked fine to for me, but since you get a 'hang' try this...
 
I'll look for that, thanks. It didn't occur to me to look for a Windows-style icon in the menu bar, I just assumed everything I needed would be in Finder. And when the eject arrow there didn't work, I was stumped.
 
I've got a PCMCIA audio interface so my situation is a bit different but I've always looked at that card as if it were a pci card and as such I shutdown my computer when I slide it in or take it out. True you don't have to do this with firewire devices but I play it safe with that crazy card. I vaguely recall reading a semi-technical explanation of why this is good practice (probably in an audio forum)

If anyone else knows where there's more powerbook/PCMIA documentation I'd like to see it. I've searched Apple's site and elsewhere and you'd think noone uses the things.
 
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