Users' Guide

Frequently Asked Questions



Payment, shipping, ordering questions -
- How do I order?
- Do you have distributors on my country?
- What is the shipping fee to my location?
- Do you offer other ways of shipping?
- How do I select the other ways of shipping?
- Can you ship on my UPS / Fed-Ex / DHL account?
- Do you service purchase orders?
- What ways of payment do you have?
- How do I send a payment to you for an order that I want to place?
- How do I calculate the order amount?
- We are located in another country, can we pay in our currency?
- We are in Europe, and our payment system allows only bank transfers?!
- Do you offer samples?
- What is your refund policy?
- Are all of the products refundable?
- Do you use RMA numbers?
- Can I call you to order?
- How do I order by fax?
- Do you have ROHS compliant products?
- I am in Europe, can I order some of your non ROHS products?

Technical questions Before ordering -
- I did read the information on your web site. Do you have some more detailed information?
- We have this ISA / PCMCIA / PCI card. Did you try and test with this card?
- Which of your products can I use with an ISA card?
- I have several ISA cards, how do I handle all of them?
- Which of your products can I use with my PCMCIA card?
- Which of your products can I use with my PCI card?
- We have the ISA / PCI card with this particular dimensions. What enclosures do you offer for this card?
- What do I need to power my ISA card?
- I am not sure of the currents consumed by my ISA card. Which power supply do I use?
- Can my ISA / PCMCIA / PCI card work for sure with your products?

Use of products, Support -
- Where is the installation software?
- How do I assemble the enclosures?
- Where is the power supply module?
- How do I hook the power supplies?
- Do I need your Enumerator?
- I have got your USB2 products, however my system has only USB1 hosts- what do I do?
- Can I use other external power supplies?
- What do I do with the USB2 driver?
- Are my USB devices going to be handled?
- My notebook crashes, when I connect your product and my card, what do I do?
- What are 'resources' and how do I deal with them?
- Do I need to load a driver for the ISA card?
- I connect everything and my ISA card is still not working, how do I solve the issue?
- My card was working under other operating system, it is going to work on Windows XP?
- We have developed this peripheral card. What do you offer for developers?
- Can I call you?
- What kind of services do you offer for your products?
- Do you offer product licensing?
- Your web site offer pricing of up to 99 units. Can we get higher quantities pricing?


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Section 2


Payment, shipping, ordering questions -


- How do I order?
In general you can place an order online on our web site, pay by credit card, and the order will be shipped to you.


- Do you have distributors on my country?
We do not have currently representatives or distributors, we can send orders directly.


- What is the shipping fee to my location?
You can get estimated pricing on our web site when you select a product and go to checkout .
Based on your address , shipping service, and total weight you can get an estimation of the shipping fee - before submitting a payment information.

- Do you offer other ways of shipping?
Normally we ship by UPS - within USA and international.
We can arrange shipping by air mail(with insurance) or express mail / EMS , for reducing of the shipping fee - if you assume the delay in delivery and the risk of loss of the package.


- How do I select the other ways of shipping?
You will need to contact us by e-mail, and specify the way of shipping.
Then you can place an order, and we can refund the difference between the UPS rate and the EMS rate, for ex.


- Can you ship on my UPS / Fed-Ex / DHL account?
Yes, we can send on your shipping account. We charge handling fee of $10 to modify manually the order for shipping.


- Do you service purchase orders?
We do not service purchase orders if we do not have a payment for the order.


- What ways of payment do you have?
In general for orders placed online, we offer payment by credit card.
The order is going to be serviced and sent right away.
For orders paid by bank transfer , we will need to get a confirmation on the transfer, and verify the amount which arrived. This may take 1-2 weeks time.


- How do I send a payment to you for an order that I want to place?
You can send a check in US dollars to us, or do a bank wire transfer to our account.
You will need to contact us in advance to provide you the details.


- How do I calculate the order amount?
If bank transfer is the only way you do payments , you will need to do the following steps:
- select products online on our we site , push 'checkout'
- fill your address , press 'submit'
- select the ups worldwide service - express/expedited, press 'submit'
- on your web browser program, press 'file', 'save as', and save the screen as a file ; this file is your invoice for the order ; you will need to send us this file in an e-mail , when you initiate the transfer;


- We are located in another country, can we pay in our currency?
We offer payments by bank wire transfers in a number of currencies. If we do not support payment in the particular currency, you can do the transfer in Euros or US dollars.
You can take the total amount of the order including the shipping fee - in US dollars, use the current exchange rate from - www.exchangerate.com , and recalculate the amount in the particular currency.

- We are in Europe, and our payment system allows only bank transfers?!
We support payments in Euros.
You will need to contact us in advance to provide you the details.

- Do you offer samples?
No, we do not offer samples. You can order and evaluate our products.


- What is your refund policy?
Here are our warranty/refund store policies -
http://www.arstech.com/page--ste_storepolicies.html .
You can return our products or a refund within 30 days of ordering.
The shipping fee is not refundable. The returned products are in used condition. We charge fees for - re-resting them, re-packaging and shipping them back to our warehouse.


- Are all of the products refundable?
We offer a refund for our hardware products.
Returned damaged / customized / modified products are not refundable.
Software products, like for ex. SDKBUS are not refundable.


- Do you use RMA numbers?
We do not use RMA numbers.
You will need to contact us, to give you the address for returning our products.


- Can I call you to order?
We offer free sales and tech support by e-mail only.
You can order online, or send us a fax.


- How do I order by fax?
You can fill our order form - www.arstech.com/ordform.zip , and fax it to 1 866 227 7605 .


- Do you have ROHS compliant products?
Yes, we do.
The EU has introduced the ROHS directive - some of our products are not ROHS compliant and we can not ship them to Europe .
When ordering, please select our ROHS compliant products - like usb2isa-r , isa-pwr-xr for ex.


- I am in Europe, can I order some of your non ROHS products?
The ROHS directive allows exemptions - we will need a letter from you if you like to use an exemption and order any of our products. We can send you sample text of it.

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Technical questions Before ordering -


- I did read the information on your web site. Do you have some more detailed information?
Yes, please download our User's Guide - www.arstech.com/users-guide.pdf . It has detailed information on our current products.


- We have this ISA / PCMCIA / PCI card. Did you try and test with this card?
Most likely we did not test with the particular peripheral card you have - you can order and evaluate.


- Which of your products can I use with an ISA card?
We have 2 lines of products supporting isa cards -
- usb2isa-r / usb2isa-ra - can use a single ISA card through USB
- ssi2-isa - can an ISA card using our host cards (ssi2-host-pci, ssi2-host-cb, ssi2-host-ec)
For details please check our user's guide.


- I have several ISA cards, how do I handle all of them?
Currently we offer the USB2 based - usb2isa-x3 , usb2isa-x7 , usb2isa-sl products, which allows using multiple ISA cards.
We will introduce SSI2 based products supporting multiple ISA cards.


- Which of your products can I use with my PCMCIA card?
You will need to check if your PCMCIA card is 16bit 'PC Card' type or 32bit 'Card Bus' type, and the voltage on the card.
We have 2 lines of products supporting PCMCIA cards -
- usb2pcmcia - supports 3.3V/5V 16bit 'PC Card' type PCMCIA card through USB
- ssi2-pcmcia - supports 3.3V 16bit and 32bit type PCMCIA card using our host cards (ssi2-host-pci, ssi2-host-cb, ssi2-host-ec)
For details please check our user's guide.

- Which of your products can I use with my PCI card?
We have the SSI2 line of products supporting PCI cards -
- ssi2-pci - supports PCI card using our host cards (ssi2-host-pci, ssi2-host-cb, ssi2-host-ec)
For details please check our user's guide.


- We have the ISA / PCI card with this particular dimensions. What enclosures do you offer for this card?
We have single and double length enclosures for a single, or multiple ISA / PCI card.
Please select the particular USB2 or SSI2 card and check what are the enclosures suitable for the card.
The web page of the enclosure, as well as our User's Guide show the dimensions for the enclosure, and the maximum size of the ISA / PCI card(s) it can take.


- What do I need to power my ISA card?
Regarding powering an isa card, please check our article -
http://www.arstech.com/page--pwrsupplyneeds.html
You can select, if needed, one of the power supplies we offer -
http://www.arstech.com/cat--powersupplies.html


- I am not sure of the currents consumed by my ISA card. Which power supply do I use?
If unsure of the currents consumed by the ISA card you can select our isa-pwr-x2 products. If you are located in the EU country, please select the ROHS compliant isa-pwr-xr product.


- Can my ISA / PCMCIA / PCI card work for sure with your products?
We can not guarantee the work of our products, under all the combinations of ISA / PCMCIA / PCI hardware and software , computer hardware and operating system .

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Use of products, Support -


- Where is the installation software?
The link has been placed on the plastic cover of the product - on the label.
The installation software contains the files for all of the operating systems we support.
Please unzip and run the setup.exe file in the Windows directory, or copy the Linux or Mac OS X files.


- How do I assemble the enclosures?
A link has been placed on the plastic cover of the product - on the label. In addition, the web page for the particular enclosure contains a link with the images of the way of assembly.


- Where is the power supply module?
The power supply module is a very small part - around 0.7" x 0.3" x 0.3" / 2cm x 1cm x 0.5 cm .
Please check again in the order box for this particular part.


- How do I hook the power supplies?
There is a link which has been placed on the box of the product - on the label.
In addition, the User's Guide shows ways of the assembly.


- Do I need your Enumerator?
Yes, in order to use our products you will need to have the Enumerator running.
After install the enumerator is set as either started automatically, or has to be started manually.


- I have got your USB2 products, however my system has only USB1 hosts- what do I do?
Our USB2 line of products require USB2 host.
You can add a USB2 host - as a PCI card to a desktop, or a PCMCIA card to a notebook computer.


- Can I use other external power supplies?
If you know that your isa card needs additional voltages and consumes high currents - when you power it with a widely used desktop switching power supply designed to provide 30-50A current on +5V to a motherboard it may not work well to provide for ex. 0.8A on +5V for usb2isa + isa. Working in non-optimal way such switching power supply it may introduce power noise , which may exceed the usb signal level - and crash the system .
For testing purposes you may use one of our external supplies - isa-pwr-x2, isa-pwr-xr .


- What do I do with the USB2 driver?
The USB2 host driver needs to be disabled manually under Windows xp . If left enabled our support and the original usb2 driver may be in conflict and the system may crash.
For details please check our User's Guide.


- Are my USB devices going to be handled?
Yes, other connected USB devices will be services by the USB1 host drivers on the system.


- My notebook crashes, when I connect your product and my card, what do I do?
Connecting for ex. usb2isa + isa , powered by the usb cable may crash a notebook computer because of the current consumed exceeds the power limits of the notebook. An external power supply is needed.


- What are 'resources' and how do I deal with them?
Resources are - I/O ports, Memory areas, IRQ channels, DMA channels present on an ISA / PCI / PCMCIA card.
The Enumerator detects automatically the resources for plug and play (PnP) ISA / PCI / PCMCIA cards.
The Enumerator detects automatically the i/o ports and memory areas of a standard (non PnP ISA) card, and in our new edition products - IRQ and DMA channels.
If some resources are not detected - must be added manually.
For details please check our user's guide.


- Do I need to load a driver for the ISA card?
There is a variety of isa software - 16 bit for dos, 32 bit for Windows nt, 98 . With 32bit software you will need to load the isa driver. If you have a standard device like a modem for ex. - you need to modify the .inf file and load the driver for it.
We can not guarantee the work of usb2isa under all the combinations of isa hardware and software , computer hardware and operating system .


- I connect everything and my ISA card is still not working, how do I solve the issue?
There are 2 types of isa cards -
- plug and play / PnP ISA cards
- non PnP ISA cards
We can recognize PnP ISA cards and load the drivers for them.
For non PnP ISA cards you will need to find the .inf file for the isa card driver, modify it , and then push 'load driver' button.
For details please check our user's guide.


- My card was working under other operating system, it is going to work on Windows XP?
Software written for older os-es - like Windows nt, may or may not work on modern os-es - like XP.


- We have developed this peripheral card. What do you offer for developers?
If you are the developer / manufacturer of a particular ISA / PCI / PCMCIA card , you may consider converting the software. We have a product - SDKBUS offering samples and an additional api set for developers.


- Can I call you?
We provide free sales and tech support by e-mail only.
We offer paid support -
- by phone
- on site , in person
Please contact us by e-mail to get details.


- What kind of services do you offer for your products?
We offer the following services:
- testing for ISA / PCI / PCMCIA peripheral cards
- customizing of our existing products; minimums apply
You will need to contact us by e-mail to get details.


- Do you offer product licensing?
We offer licensing to our existing customers, who have reached volumes.


- Your web site offer pricing of up to 99 units. Can we get higher quantities pricing?
We can offer 100 or more unit pricing only to customers who did accumulate the total number with previous orders.