SATA II Expresscard on MBP running 10.4.11??

[prof]

I bought one of these expresscards after reading favorable mentions here about it working well on a MBP,
but I can't seem to get it to work.
http://www.meritline.com/1x-e-sata2-port...scard.html
I'm using a MBP 2.4 running 10.4.11. I plug the card into the Expresscard slot and System profiler sees it
Ok but the LED on the card stays unlit. I connect a WD My Book Studio 1 Tb HD to it and again System Profiler
sees it but the HD doesn't mount. I then try Disk Utility and it doesn't see it at all. I'm getting the feelng that
if the card was working correctly the LED on it should be lit. It only lights briefly when I unplug the card.
Which then leads to a kernal panic and have to restart the computer. Am I doing something obviously wrong??
I don't have another Mac with an expresscard slot to try it on and I have no interest in upgrading to Leopard
only for this card. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

TIA,
prof

[DRR]

Have you tried restarting with the card in the slot? Tiger may not support hot-plugging.

[prof]

DRR wrote:
Have you tried restarting with the card in the slot? Tiger may not support hot-plugging.

Yep, I've tried that as well. No go.
Thanks for the suggestion tho.

[mattkime]

hm, maybe it requires leopard to work. know anyone who could give it a try?

[heap1]

I am using that same card on a MBP with Lepoard. It seems to work fine. Right now, I am using it with a LaCie external drive as my main boot drive. It also has no problems with sleep issues like some other SATA cards seem to have.

However, there are 2 caveats to using the card.
1) The card is not plug and play. You need to start-up with the drive connected or else it will not be recognized.
2) Devices connected to the card need their own external power supply or else they won't work.

[btfc]

Have you installed drivers?

[heap1]

No, the card uses the built-in system drivers with Leopard. Maybe Tiger doesn't have built-in drivers for the card.

[heap1]

The card available at Meritline uses the JMicron chipset. Apparently most ESATA cards use a Silicon Image chipset, which need installed drivers to operate.

"Accelerate Your Mac" has a database of reader's feedback on using Express34 cards in a MBP.

[btfc]

"Apparently most ESATA cards use a Silicon Image chipset, which need installed drivers to operate."

Yeah, mine does.