Litronic Argus 2102 PCMCIA reader

TerryMathews

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,464
2
0
This is a hardware question, so I know it's not exactly kosher, but it's waaaay over the heads of most of the people in general hardware so I thought I'd bring it here anyway.

I came into posession of a Litronic (Now SSP Litronic) Argus 2102 PCMCIA card reader. Problem is, it interfaces via SCSI. To top it off, Litronic swears that their drivers don't give that reader the ability to read standard PCMCIA cards (I don't believe this) and won't let me access them as I don't have a DMS account number.

From what little information I've gathered, the reader handles most of the grunt work internally. It's got a processor (AMD186) and a standard PCMCIA chipset (Cirrus Logic PD6722) tethered together with a BIOS and a few other chips.

I've tried forcing a similar PCMCIA SCSI reader driver onto it (Spyrus RD300), the driver installs, but nothing happens. I have access to a _very_ old driver for DOS/Win 3.1 that supplies Card Services for this reader. Requires an ASPI layer. A whole bunch of information, including the driver SS4SCSI.com. I don't know if you could 'decompile' those old DOS drivers, to see just what is involved in talking to a reader like this?

Anyone have any experience, or a driver set, for this beast? I'd love to have a PCMCIA reader.
 

sgtroyer

Member
Feb 14, 2000
94
0
0
If you want to write a driver, I'd find a forum full of linux fanatics. They're always doing this type of this because most hardware providers don't provide linux drivers. They might be able to provide some advice.
 

TerryMathews

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,464
2
0
I'm trying to avoid writing a driver; one is supposed to exist somewhere, or did at one time.

I was hoping that someone here had or had access to a Win2k or WinXP driver for this reader. I don't entirely believe Litronic that the Fortezza card services driver does not provide access to non-Fortezza cards. I think they just don't want to give me access since I don't have a DMS number.