Customer Reviews

SanDisk ImageMate External Parallel CompactFlash Card Reader

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I got the USB ImageMate and I am impressed. Installation was easy - I was downloading pictures within five minutes. I had used the serial connection to download from the camera and was dismayed by the slowness. I just downloaded about three megabytes of pix in 15 seconds. Drag and drop - poof! Done.

I recently received a wonderful gift of a Kodak DX3500 digital camera, with the Loading Dock that connects it to a PC. My initial elation evaporated as I discovered that the Dock-to-PC connection requires a USB connection. The Toshiba Tecra 8100 laptop I'm using has a USB port, but it's taped over because NT 4.0 doesn't support USB (Win2000 and 98 do). I turned to look for a device that would read the camera's CompactFlash card, but didn't need USB to connect. After some scouring of the web (including a comical dead end involving "tech" reps who couldn't provide answers to compatibility questions beyond reading from the company same web page I was already looking at, and a more technical rep who informed me that the item was no longer available from the mfr. and agreed that it probably should be removed from that e-tailer's web page), I found the SanDisk ImageMate External Parallel CF Card Reader. This device provided what I needed: a CompactFlash card reader with a non-USB connection to a machine running NT 4.0.

The setup was painless. The ImageMate plugs into the parallel port, with a passthrough connection for the printer. Power is drawn from a passthrough connection to the PS/2, into which the mouse cable connector fits.

The ImageMate software makes the device appear as a mapped drive. You can read, write, and delete picture files on this drive. A provided software utility swaps out the ImageMate (to let you safely removed the picture card).

We installed the Kodak Loading Dock on a Win98 USB machine, and it works just great. But transfer on the ImageMate is almost as fast and easy.

I've been verbose in this review for the sake of others running the web search I did. You've probably come to the only right place. (I didn't find any other easily acceptable connection devices.)

I consider myself technically savy but installing this piece of hardware has been a nightmare. I have had this for a week and it is still not up and running. As another reviewer has already noted the drivers seem to cause a "fatal exception error" in Windows 98. You have to dig through the Read Me file to find out that you must stop nearly all processes in the task bar to even install the software. Once that hurdle was overcome my computer still did not recognize the device. At the guidance of tech support I am learning all about the Device Manager settings, getting to go into BIOS and play with ECP+EPP, match IO port numbers between BIOS and the Device Manager and so much more. And it still is not working. If this does not sound like fun to you don't buy this product. And did I mention you have to wait 1/2 hour to get through to tech support even at 6am in the morning???????

I needed this device in order to reformat and test a CF card that had gone bad. It works (but I really did need a new card).

After reading about other reviewers' installation problems I was dreading what I'd face, but the problems I had weren't that serious. I didn't have to upgrade Windows (I have early 98). Right after installation the printer wouldn't respond, but selecting first a different printer, then the original one again, cured that. The drivers sound a tone (beep-boop or boop-beep) when the card is inserted or removed; if I start up the computer without a card inserted, sometimes the system gets neurotic and cries (continuous bee-ee-ee-ee-eep) until I insert a card as a "pacifier". Other than that, it works fine -- just like having one more disk drive.

A while ago I got a Nikon 990 digital camera which came with a USB cable. I had a NT machine and the USB port didn't work. So I ordered the serial cable from Nikon but they were in no hurry to make them (I waited for 3 months) so I looked for alternatives. This ImageMate CF reader was it.

Striaght out of the box, I was able to hook it up to my machine, install it and download pictures from my camera (5 mins install with reboot). The manual instructions were weak (had a couple of pages) but I just installed the software on the CD and presto another virtual drive appeared on my computer. The removable drive icon showed up on the NT explorer and I was able to just copy/cut the picture files from the card. It was great. Three months of waiting and I was finally able to get my pictures downloaded. I am still waiting for my cable to do the firmware update though. If only getting the serial cable from Nikon was this easy.

If you have Windows 95, do NOT purchase this item. Despite what they say, this card reader is NOT compatible with Windows 95 and will cause the system to crash repeatedly. I spent hours installing, uninstalling and re-installing both the hardware and the software -- to no avail. Besides the Windows 95 problem, the parallel cable included with the card reader also caused my printer to malfunction -- the reason according to my printer: the cable "does not support bi-directional communication". This whole experience was one big nightmare....the only bright spot is that Amazon's return procedure is much less painless than I expected -- I am returning the SanDisk Imagemate Card Reader today!

The only thing that fixed the constant crashing when I tried loading the software for this CF reader was to load Windows ME. It fixed the problem, whatever it was - too bad I had to spend more money to make it work. SanDisk needs to rethink the installation software they ship with it. Once I got it working, it's as easy as using a floppy. I've been moving files in and out of my CF card without any problem. I recommend this ONLY if you're willing to upgrade Windows - otherwise, don't bother because it just won't work.

Everyone who is using Win95(pre-USB-patched) or simply ran out of IRQ (my PC) should pick this one up. I am runing Win98 on my Pentium II and thinking USB should be no problem, right? Wrong! I had just simply ran out of IRQ with my soundcard, network card, SCSI card ...etc. As long as you have a "not too old" PC which supports EPP/ECP printer port, this small device should make you happy. It is simple to setup (2 mins) and has small footprint. Best part is - it is actually quite fast!

I bought this card reader because my computer is older and I was unable to use a serial port or USB connection with my new digital camera. As stated in other reviews, the directions are skimpy. However, the installation was quick (maybe 10 minutes start to finish) and I experienced no problems whatsoever in getting it to work. I do not have a printer so I don't know if the printer connection would create additional problems. The download time to get the images off the card is very fast and I am thrilled with this device.

It took all of 5 minutes to set up this great tool. Within 10 minutes I had retrieved my compactflash card from my digital camera and had used the card reader to import the images to adobe for manipulation and storage. A great product! (I purchased the item because my laptops USB port had failed and i needed an alternate means of getting the images from my compact flash card into my imaging programs; this product worked great!)