Coolmax HD-211-COMBO with Prolific PL3507 chipset

Coolmax HD-211-COMBO with Prolific PL3507 chipset

[Andrew Haninger]

Greetings.

I recently purchased a USB2+Firewire 2.5" portable harddrive
enclosure. The enclosure is from Coolmax and is a HD-211-COMBO. The
chipset is a Firewire and USB2 all-in-one deal called PL3507 from
Prolific. I've read a bit about this chipset and few people (who are
talking, at least) seem to have much success with it. I am strongly
considering returning the enclosure for a refund.

I have been able to get it to be detected and work on just one machine
running Linux; an IBM xSeries 206 server running Fedora Core 2 (kernel
2.6.5). The device is rarely detected, but when it is, it seems to use
the EHCI driver and it works fine until you unplug it and try to plug
it back in. This behavior is not only limited to Linux, though. I have
found just one Windows machine so far that detects it fine even if it
is unplugged and plugged back in.

So, while I'm very likely going to make use of Newegg's 30-day
money-back guarantee, I thought I'd try to help the community out
however I can. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to return
their hardware for a refund. So if I can help someone who is
developing a driver by testing it, I'd like to do that.  If anyone has
any drivers that they are writing that might help to make this device
work on Linux, I would be happy to be a guinea pig for your project.

The desktop system I have access to is running kernel 2.4.18, so that
would likely not be of any help. However, I installed 2.6.8.1 on my
Gateway Solo 2500 laptop (to no avail), so I can help with that
kernel. The USB ports on that machine are v1.1 only. I, unfortunately,
have no systems with USB2 or Firewire that are running Linux.

Unfortunately, my skills do not permit me to be a driver designer.
What I can do (and what I'm offering to do) is to test drivers for
people who need things tested.

So, if anyone has a need for help testing drivers for the PL3507
chipset, let me know.

Thank you.

-Andy
ahaning@gmail.com

Re: Coolmax HD-211-COMBO with Prolific PL3507 chipset

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Andrew Haninger wrote:

> Greetings.
>
> I recently purchased a USB2+Firewire 2.5" portable harddrive
> enclosure. The enclosure is from Coolmax and is a HD-211-COMBO. The
> chipset is a Firewire and USB2 all-in-one deal called PL3507 from
> Prolific. I've read a bit about this chipset and few people (who are
> talking, at least) seem to have much success with it. I am strongly
> considering returning the enclosure for a refund.
>

Data point:

I use an ACOM portable drive that (I'm fairly sure) uses the same
USB/Firewire interface chip-set.

It sometimes has trouble being discovered on my COMPAQ Presario
Lap-top using USB, and sometimes has the same trouble on Firewire
using Linux-2.4.26 drivers. But once it is mounted on either systems
I don't have any trouble.

[SNIPPED...]


Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.26 on an i686 machine (5570.56 BogoMips).
            Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.

Re: Coolmax HD-211-COMBO with Prolific PL3507 chipset

[John Stoffel]

Andrew> I recently purchased a USB2+Firewire 2.5" portable harddrive
Andrew> enclosure. The enclosure is from Coolmax and is a
Andrew> HD-211-COMBO. The chipset is a Firewire and USB2 all-in-one
Andrew> deal called PL3507 from Prolific. I've read a bit about this
Andrew> chipset and few people (who are talking, at least) seem to
Andrew> have much success with it. I am strongly considering returning
Andrew> the enclosure for a refund.

Return it.  I've got a Prolific chipset enclosure and I can't make it
work properly under either Linux of my wife's Windows 2000 box.  I
paid's my money and took's my chances.  I'm a sucker.

Andrew> I have been able to get it to be detected and work on just one
Andrew> machine running Linux; an IBM xSeries 206 server running
Andrew> Fedora Core 2 (kernel 2.6.5). The device is rarely detected,
Andrew> but when it is, it seems to use the EHCI driver and it works
Andrew> fine until you unplug it and try to plug it back in. This
Andrew> behavior is not only limited to Linux, though. I have found
Andrew> just one Windows machine so far that detects it fine even if
Andrew> it is unplugged and plugged back in.

Detection was never the problem for me under either Linux or Windows,
it was that if you started writing data to it, it would choke and hang
completely.  You could run badblocks on the device without problems,
do a mkfs as well.  No problem.  Just try to write too much data (or
as I suspect in too large chunks) and it just wigged out and locked up
the drive.  At least under firewire it didn't take down the box.

It didn't work much better under USB2.0 (linux only testing though)
since it would write more data, but it would completely hang the
system.  

Andrew> So, while I'm very likely going to make use of Newegg's 30-day
Andrew> money-back guarantee, I thought I'd try to help the community
Andrew> out however I can. Not everyone has the luxury of being able
Andrew> to return their hardware for a refund. So if I can help
Andrew> someone who is developing a driver by testing it, I'd like to
Andrew> do that.  If anyone has any drivers that they are writing that
Andrew> might help to make this device work on Linux, I would be happy
Andrew> to be a guinea pig for your project.

The only thing I've seen which I haven't had time to work on yet,
thanks to a two year old little boy, is to take the iee1394 drives
from the 2.6.2 kernel and move them forward to the 2.6.8 kernel.  Some
people have reported success with the sbp2 driver in that case.  

In my case, I suspect that the prolific chipset sucks rocks. 

John
   John Stoffel - Senior Unix Systems Administrator - Lucent Technologies
	 stoffel@lucent.com - http://www.lucent.com - 978-952-7548