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PCI serial cards and Windows 7

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• PCI serial cards and Windows 7

• PCI serial cards and Windows 7

  gw4frx > 08-28-2015, 06:46 AM

  Greetings and my apologies if this is a silly question. I've looked around the forum and elsewhere but can't find an answer.
  
  I use an elderly Dell PC for amateur radio purposes. This contains two Lava PCI dual-port serial cards which worked very well under Windows XP. I recently migrated to Windows 7 but unfortunately it can’t find drivers for either card. The hardware IDs are PCI\VEN_1407&DEV_0110&REV00 and PCI\VEN_1407&DEV_0A00&REV00.
  
  I know these are 'legacy' cards now but they've worked very well for a long time. Are any suitable drivers available please?  
  
  Many thanks.
  
  John

• RE: PCI serial cards and Windows 7

  LavaSupport > 08-31-2015, 09:41 AM

  Hi John,
  
  Would you be able to provide the MOKO numbers of both cards?  The MOKO number is silkscreen in white on all of our cards and will be along the lines of MOKO L66.7.
  
  The first hardware ID you provided (DEV_0110) refers to Port A of our DSerial PCI card and should be supported by standard driver (Lava_2014_07_15.zip), but I'm not quite sure what card the second hardware ID refers to.  Regardless I would suggest trying the driver above as a starting point for installing the card as it will definitely work in Windows 7 and should at least support the first card.
  
  - Lava Support

• RE: PCI serial cards and Windows 7

  gw4frx > 08-31-2015, 10:47 AM

  >Would you be able to provide the MOKO numbers of both cards?  The MOKO number is silkscreen in white on all of our cards and will be along the lines of MOKO L66.7.<
  
  With pleasure, and thank you very much for the reply. One card has a silk-screened branding of 'DSerial PCI' and its MOKO is L71.3C. The other is branded Dual-650 PCI but does not appear to have a MOKO as such. Its 'P N' is given as G66.5 and the track side of the PCB shows 'Copyright 1998 Lava Computer'. The main IC is a Xilinx XC5202 and the two ports each have an ST16C650 associated with them.
  
  > The first hardware ID you provided (DEV_0110) refers to Port A of our DSerial PCI card and should be supported by standard driver (Lava_2014_07_15.zip), but I'm not quite sure what card the second hardware ID refers to.  Regardless I would suggest trying the driver above as a starting point for installing the card as it will definitely work in Windows 7 and should at least support the first card.<
  
  After having posted my first message I looked at your OS matrix and downloaded the driver file. I unzipped this and pointed Device Manager at the appropriate directory but it resolutely refused to find what it thinks is a compatible driver. Is there some special procedure for updating the driver with these elderly cards? The PC is a Dell Dimension 8200 and the OS is fully patched.
  
  I'm determined to get these venerable and very useful cards going...

• RE: PCI serial cards and Windows 7

  gw4frx > 08-31-2015, 03:20 PM

  Further to my last, I've now managed to get the DSerial card to work. The problem seemed to be that the Device Manager driver update facility needed to be pointed specifically to the subfolder with the associated .inf file immediately after uninstalling the card and re-booting. Which is a good start.
  
  Unfortunately I still haven't persuaded Windows 7 to see the Dual-650 card in the same way. It tries to install but throws up an error message 'Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it'. It correctly identifies the card as a 'LavaPort Dual-650 PCI' which hopefully is a good sign and there are a couple of references in the .inf file to the device ID of PCI\VEN_1407&DEV_0A00, so it would seem that Windows is looking at the correct file.
  
  Is there any way to obtain more information from the OS about the error it encounters?

• RE: PCI serial cards and Windows 7

  LavaSupport > 09-01-2015, 01:34 PM

  Hi John,
  
  Glad to hear that you managed to get the DSerial-550 card working.
  
  In regards to the 650 card, what version of Windows 7 are you currently using? Is it a 32-bit version, or 64-bit install. Unfortunately Windows error codes tend to be a little cryptic and I haven't been able to obtain more information than what is displayed in the device manager.
  
  That being said I'll do some digging on my end to see if there is an older driver that supports the your card.
  
  - Lava Support

• RE: PCI serial cards and Windows 7

  gw4frx > 09-01-2015, 01:46 PM

  >In regards to the 650 card, what version of Windows 7 are you currently using? Is it a 32-bit version, or 64-bit install. Unfortunately Windows error codes tend to be a little cryptic and I haven't been able to obtain more information than what is displayed in the device manager.<
  
  Sorry, I should have said that it's the 32-bit version. I've also just noticed that in addition to the 'Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it' there is a line underneath which says 'The system cannot find the file specified'. This suggests a path problem of some kind but I can't see anything obvious on inspection of the .inf file. I've been digging around in various OS logs and trying to make sense of the entry in the Windows event files in the Management console but with no success so far.
  
  For some reason the driver I have worked perfectly under XP and I rather doubt it's a driver problem per se. Would it help if I sent you a copy of the file folder containing the files so you could check for path errors?

• RE: PCI serial cards and Windows 7

  LavaSupport > 09-01-2015, 03:05 PM

  Hello John,
  
  No worries about the version number I more just wanted to make sure that you weren't attempting to install a 650 card into a 64-bit install of Windows 7, because it won't work due to the Driver Signing requirements of Windows 7-64.
  
  Based on Device ID it sounds like it may have been a generic card that was designed for a third party may years back. I haven't had any luck tracking down the old driver as of yet, but I'm in the process of performing a deep seach on my PC. Do happen to still have access to the previous XP system that the card was installed on?
  
  - Lava Support

• RE: PCI serial cards and Windows 7

  LavaSupport > 09-01-2015, 03:15 PM

  Hi John,
  
  Let me know if this OEM driver works for you (LavaPortPCI_OEM), I think it might be a better match to your DSerial 650 card.
  
  - Lava Support

• RE: PCI serial cards and Windows 7

  gw4frx > 09-01-2015, 04:40 PM

  >Let me know if this OEM driver works for you (LavaPortPCI_OEM), I think it might be a better match to your DSerial 650 card.<
  
  Many thanks. Unfortunately it gives exactly the same result. The first message is that it's installing the driver but then you get the error message about not being able to find the file specified. Aaarrgghh!
  
  Looking at the lavaomf file, it expects to find two other files (qserial.sys and lavmdmfx.bin) which apparently don't exist in Windows 7. I also noticed that in the original zip file set the .inf file called up lpserial32.sys and lavaport32.dll whereas the ones in the set were lpserial.sys and lavaport.dll, as they are in the set you sent earlier. Changing them didn't help, alas.
  
  I think this particular card was an OEM that came with a Dell machine many moons ago. But it's worked in several subsequent Dell PCs.
  
  Could you please have a look at the lavaomf file in the set you sent and see whether it's pointing to the right files for Win 7?

• RE: PCI serial cards and Windows 7

  LavaSupport > 09-02-2015, 09:40 AM

  Hi John,
  
  If the OEM driver file didn't work it might have to do with a couple of multifunction driver references that were modified in the new driver set.  Could you try modifying l650omf.inf file in the original driver set.
  
  Within l650omf.inf there should be a couple of references to the 650 card's device ID:
  
  %Lava-LavaPort-PCI.DeviceDesc%      =DSERIAL650,        PCI\VEN_1407&DEV_0200
  
  Try changing both lines in l650omf.inf to match the OEM device ID of the 650 card:
  
  %Lava-LavaPort-PCI.DeviceDesc%      =DSERIAL650,        PCI\VEN_1407&DEV_0A00
  
  Let me know if that works for you.
  
  - Lava Support
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