How's Asus Z71V Doing For You?!!! - Page 6

After buying a Z71V (and likeing it so far) I had an instance where I needed to plug in a Trans PC Card Universal Parallel Port (TDC303)card http://www.transdigital.net/info.htm

I had a security dongle that needed to plug into a real parallel port to work. The above card seemed suitable.

The security dongle is not recognized.

Could the problem be the Ricoh R/RL/5C476II PC Card slot chip?

I find several Web sites that do not recommend the Ricoh products - many claim products will not work with Ricoh - <one example>:

"The majority of corporate Windows XP / 2000 notebooks are compatible with our product line. However, some notebooks are incompatible, particularly "budget" consumer notebooks which are designed for casual use and do not use the industry's best CardBus controllers.

Our products connect to notebook computers via a CardBus interface card (PCMCIA Type II PC Card), with high-speed communication managed by the notebook's onboard CardBus controller chip.

o Compatible notebooks must have an available PC Card slot.
o The notebook motherboard must use a certified CardBus controller.

Years of testing has consistently shown that only CardBus controllers made by Texas Instruments or Toshiba have sufficient throughput to ensure compatibility and system stability.

Ricoh CardBus controllers have always been incompatible. ENE and O2Micro CardBus controllers are also not recommended, due to consistent problems with system stability.

Texas Instruments controllers are premium devices and tend to be used by a majority of non-Toshiba corporate notebooks, such as Dell Precision notebooks. Toshiba controllers are also recommended, but are used only by Toshiba notebooks.

Digital Tigers can do nothing to improve compatibility with Ricoh, ENE and O2Micro. And since the CardBus controller is part of the motherboard, an incompatible notebook cannot be "fixed" or upgraded.

In summary:
o Compatible: Texas Instruments controllers, used by the majority of corporate notebooks
o Compatible: Toshiba controllers, used by most Toshiba notebooks
o Not recommended: ENE controllers, used by some consumer Windows notebooks
o Not recommended: O2Micro controllers, used by some consumer Windows notebooks
o Incompatible: Ricoh controllers, notably used by IBM ThinkPad "A" and "X" series notebooks."

Has anyone else had problems?

No, I did not need to install any drivers. After the first insertion of the
card the machine displayed a message that TDC card was installed.
No wizard popped-up looking for the drivers.

This company claims "The card after installation is a real parallel port!.
The difference is that PCMCIA address vs. logical address
is dynamic - varable to support PnP." They then comment "Other concern is the PCMCIA slot of your machine.
(Does it support 5V - parallel port operates at 5V
many of those cheaper machines just support only CardBus at 3.3V)."

The Ricoh site says they support 3.3V but 'tolorate' 5V.

Robert

The device is reported to be functioning 'without problems', no conflicts - so the systems sees no problems with the PCMCIA controller nor the parallel port adapter (although the dongle attached to the adapter is not recognized by the s/w app). My reason for the posting was to comment on what my research showed to be a well configured laptop may have one component that is not rated very high. I had done so much research on what I thought was every aspect of the Z71V before I purchased but to now find out ASUS 'may' have used 1 component of less than high quality rating - just providing some input for others to consider (although I am far from an expert on the quality of Ricoh products so am reporting only what I have found on the Internet relating to Ricoh).
Overall I am happy with my Z71V purchase even though the battery life does not live up to the advertised 4+ hours (2.5 hrs is still not too bad).

Robert

Anybody with a Z71v who hasn't voted yet, please do!

Check out my sig, I could actually clock a lot higher, but the heat wasn't worth it, I get solid performance out of this clock and it never really gets any hotter then it does at stock.

New Memeber

Hi all. I'm new to the group but have had my Z71v for almost a month now and absoultly love it. This is my first personal laptop purchase so I did a lot of research and this forum was a great resourse so I must thank you all for that. I have a new baby in the house so haven't done any performance testing but have been playing WOW when I can and I have no complaints. I had an AW Area 51 with the go5600 at my last job and hated the weight and heat it produced, P4 2.8 HT. I actually sold my gaming and some other extra parts to buy this laptop and build a new gaming rig but so far I don't have the need to build a new desktop.

I am running the 80.40 driver from laptopviedo2go.com and am curious to hear what driver others are using.

I have a Z71V and it's been great, the original battery design did fail but i got it replaced, just wished it was made out of aluminum instead of plastic.... it would look sooo much better

Well, it looks like this thread is pretty much dead, but I have a question about the z71v. I have the graphics card OC'ed to 300/600 and it works perfectly fine, but the problem is that the temperature can get as high as 105 C. Do you guys have any suggestions about what I should OC it too so that the temperature is at a reasonable level? (I'm assuming about 90 C is good?) I read somewhere that the stock frequencies are actually lower in the z71v's than what these gfx cards are actually rated at; is there any truth to that?

here's some info on the graphics card stuff and a proposed solution to the high temps

I don't see a link.

Sorry 'bout that! My brain kinda skipped that part!

http://www.z71forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=12

Ehh, I think the oc'ed one is hotter because it wasn't made to run at that speed.

Anyways, I got my laptop back today from repair
Except ASUS broke the LCD latch that holds the cover down

Oh well, hopefully they did fix the graphic card, which I will test out once I get CSS installed.