Internal card reader reviewed.. sort of!!

Hi all,

I mentioned in another thread, this..

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-2-0-3-5-Internal-Card-Reader-Writer-SILVER-I3SB_W0QQit...

There's bucket loads of them for sale at £6 including postage, and as I've just got mine today after pointing it out, I thought I'd let you know what it's like. It does what it says on the tin.. it's obviously plug'n'pray with XP, and introduces 4 new drives to the My Computer line up. If you still use W98 (first edition, as I think SE should be fine anyway) then it's supplied with a driver disc.

For those that have K10Ds or a D and a DL etc, where you need readers for both CF and SD cards, it's got the slots.

Installation.. it took me about ten minutes, although I'm more than happy to bugger about in the innards of a computer. It connects to a 9 pin USB plug on the mobo (I just disconnected the one for the 2 front USB ports, as I use a hub anyway) and is mounted in a spare 3.5" bay. You should find a spare one either just above or below the floppy disc drive, with a blanking plate over the front.

The only bugbear I found was that one of the chassis mount screw holes wasn't aligned properly, so the screw's a bit of a tight fit. As there's no moving parts, as opposed to an optical drive though, there's no vibration to worry about, so it doesn't really matter..

One note; you'll see that there are two rows of card slots. To keep it compact, the contacts are actually set in the layer that separates the rows, so the SD card goes in with the contacts pointing up, and the label down, whereas (I'm assuming, as I've never used a CF card) your CF card will go in with the label face up (and the contacts down)

The handy LEDs are quite good, as it means that even if you miss the fact that there is 1/2 a square inch of blue plastic hanging out the front of your machine the LED is there to let you know this..

End of equipment review.

Cheers

Liam

I've already got something very similar built into my machine. It's an old Sony tower that my now has very different innards but still retains built in memory stick, smart media and CF slots... Typical that it hasn't got an SD slot eh

I used to use the CF slot loads and my only comment with something like this is that it attracts loads of dust into the slots, must be something to do with the static charge (?) - I've often has to give the slots a blast of air to get the card to sit in the slot properly!!!

Will

Hi Will,

never thought of dust, but I blow mine out occasionally anyway. It shouldn't (in theory) get too much as it's a sealed casing, so there's no dust sucked through the ports themselves.. again theory..

Cheers

Liam

Maybe it's just me being grubby......

EDIT: Yay.. I just noticed I passed 500 posts.. of course that means nothing to me obviously.. ahem.