External enclosures: Genesys Logic vs. Cypress

I finally figured out how to get this to work, no thanks to the alzheimer's patients in this thread.

I'll post more later, but right now, I feel like filing a class-action lawsuit against Cypress Semiconductor and the companies that use their USB2 chipsets. It's outrageous that enclosures are making it out of manufacturing QC, and no one but CDFreaks seem to be able to discover or fix the problem.

Why is this crap allowed to happen?

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Last edited by negritude; 22-03-2009 at 10:45.

So, for those not using a virtual machine, after you install the AT2Blaster program, you need to manually associate your external drive with the special Cypress programming driver. Under Windows XP and Windows 2000, this does not happen automatically. I suspect that others didn't have to make the change because they were using Windows 98, or it may have been related to the use of a VM, I'm not sure.

The name of the file you need to remember is:

CYMFG.SYS

That's the special programming driver that allows the AT2Blaster program to communicate with and modify the chipset. Without it, the program will run, but it can't see or talk to the chip.

Under Windows 2000, this gets installed in \WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS.

Under Windows XP, this gets installed in \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS.

To make the change, you go under Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> Universal Serial Bus Controllers. Then right-click an entry that says USB Mass Storage Device, and then click Properties. If under properties the Location says "USB2.0 Storage Device" in parentheses, that's the one associated with your external drive (in case it's not obvious, when doing this, turn off all other external devices other than the one you are modifying, to avoid confusion and the chance of damaging something).

Then click the Driver tab, press Update Driver, and then the wizard will pop up. Click Next, and then select the radio button that says "Display A List Of Known Devices...". Then select "Show All Hardware Of This Device Class", then under Manufacturer find Cypress, and under Models, Cypress Manufacturing Driver AT2. Click Next, then reply Yes. It will then ask you for the location of the driver, as I stated above.

Once the driver is installed, you should reboot, then run AT2Blaster. When finished with the modification, go back and reinstall the standard Microsoft driver so that your drive once again appears as a standard USB device. Speed should be increased as outlined elsewhere in the thread.

Note that, I made my changes under Windows 2000. This should also work under Windows XP or Vista, but what you may need to do first is disable the driver signing requirements that those OSes normally have in place. There is a setting in the control panel somewhere for that.

Have you finally come to the conclusion that it's too inefficient to insult people one at a time, so it's better to insult everyone in the thread all at once?

Sorry, I forgot the smiley. It was just good-natured ribbing. No insult was intended, or rather, it was more of a playful jab.

Those smileys can be very important.

I did some more testing and could not get things to work with Windows XP. It will not allow me to change the driver with just a SYS file, I would need to have an INF file. So, the best way to do this for most, if you're using XP, Vista, or 7, is to use a virtual machine as described by others earlier in the thread. This kit will only work smoothly with Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2003 Server, and earlier.

And this is an obvious reminder to keep those old operating systems. They can sometimes be useful.

I just fixed an old ADS Technologies 5.25 "tank" enclosure using the same procedure.

I'm still amazed that so many Cypress chipsets left the factory improperly configured. No one at Cypress checked, and none of the enclosure or external drive manufacturers checked. Very pathetic QC.

Another example of an improperly configured Cypress-based enclosure:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f43/very-un...x-760a-279720/

Yes, and the "FIX" did not solve it either. Perhaps a slightly different version of the chip? At any rate, those enclosures were returned for a full refund and replaces with NEC chipset enclosures which solved the speed issue.