Updated Sony Driver Transforms Sonnet's Echo ExpressCard Adapter Fastest and Least Expensive SxS Memory Card Reader with Thunderbolt Technology

Sonnet Technologies announced on April 16, 2012 that the Echo™ ExpressCard® Thunderbolt™ Adapter, which enables the use of many Sonnet ExpressCard/34 cards with computers equipped with a Thunderbolt port—including the latest Apple® iMac®, Mac® mini, MacBook Air®, and MacBook® Pro models—can now function as an SxS™ memory card reader. Sonnet supported Sony® in its work to create a Thunderbolt technology-compatible Mac OS® X driver to enable this functionality. This updated driver also enables full functionality of Sonnet’s Qio™ E3 professional SxS media reader, when connected through the Echo adapter to a computer with a Thunderbolt port.

High-performance SxS memory cards are used in Sony’s popular XDCAM® EX™ line of professional HD camcorders and the ARRI® ALEXA line of digital cameras, and share the same form factor and connector as ExpressCard/34 adapter cards. These shared traits make ingesting footage from SxS media a quick, simple task in ExpressCard slot-equipped notebook computers. In any other situation, this process requires the use of a specialized media reader, such as Sonnet’s Qio™ pro media readers with multiple SxS slots for speedy file offloads. With the added capability to read SxS, SxS Pro™, and SxS-1™ cards, the Echo ExpressCard Thunderbolt Adapter instantly becomes the least expensive high-speed SxS memory card reader available, enabling Thunderbolt technology-equipped Mac computers to read SxS cards at over 100 MB/s.

When used with the Echo ExpressCard Thunderbolt Adapter, users can connect Sonnet’s Qio E3 professional SxS media reader, with its ExpressCard/34 interface card, to compatible computers with a Thunderbolt port. This setup supports concurrent data transfers from SxS memory cards in all three slots for even faster file ingest speeds.

“With the installation of Sony’s Thunderbolt technology-compatible driver for Mac OS X, Echo ExpressCard Thunderbolt Adapter users gain the ability to ingest footage through a small, rugged adapter using the latest I/O technology to improve workflow speeds significantly,” said Robert Farnsworth, CEO of Sonnet Technologies. “This new driver benefits users of our Qio E3 professional media reader, enabling them to connect their readers to Thunderbolt technology-equipped computers through the Echo ExpressCard adapter and ingest footage from multiple SxS memory cards at the same time.”

Developed by Intel® and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple, Thunderbolt technology supports high-performance data services and high-resolution displays through a single compact port. The Echo ExpressCard Thunderbolt Adapter supports PCI Express technology with 2.5 Gbps throughput in both directions. The Sonnet adapter connects directly to a computer or at the end of a Thunderbolt device chain with a Thunderbolt cable, which is available at the Apple Store®.

“Thunderbolt delivers unparalleled performance, flexibility and simplicity to personal computing.” said Jason Ziller, Intel’s director of Thunderbolt marketing. “The Sonnet Echo ExpressCard Thunderbolt Adapter and Qio E3 help highlight what Thunderbolt technology makes possible.”

The Echo ExpressCard Thunderbolt Adapter—part number ECHO-E34—is compatible with all Apple computers running Mac OS X that are equipped with Thunderbolt ports. It is available now at a suggested retail price of $149.95 through Sonnet and Sonnet resellers.

A link to the driver is below. It says nothing about the Thunderbolt compatibility on the downloads page. As of this morning, the actual version of the driver that gets downloaded is 1.1.0.03142 (even though the text on Sony's site says "Latest Version for Mac : Ver:1.0.52020") http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-recmedia/resource.downloads.bbsccms-assets-mkt-recmedia-downloads-upgrades.shtml

Can I 'rescan' the PCI expansion slots?

This is in response to a question we saw on an archived Apple Discussion board": "Can I 'rescan' the PCI expansion slots?" Many of the answers you've been provided with here are incorrect. By specification, PCIe (PCI Express) is supposed to feature hot swap capability. This is why the ExpressCard standard features it for the higher end of the specification without modification. The has nothing to do with drivers or any of the other erroneous information put forth in this thread.

The inability of Mac OS X and Windows (Windows requires user intervention via their bizarre "device manager" interface) to hot swap PCIe based devices may stem from the fact that vendors didn't expect devices on the market which took advantage of PCIe's hot swap capability. Since Apple has implemented hot swap on the MacBook Pro's ExpressCard slot [1], there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to do the same with Macs featuring PCIe slots. At my day job, Synchrotech, we have to answer to people wanting to use Sony/Sandisk SxS cards on PowerMac G5 (PCIe) and Mac Pro systems almost every day. When we explain that a PCIe to ExpressCard reader currently requires a reboot between card swaps.

To put this in perspective MS argues that PCIe hot swap isn't possible, and that manually refreshing to rescan is the fault of BIOS/Firmware. Putting this theory to the test, we sent a PCIe to ExpressCard reader with several PCIe based ExpressCards to the OpenBSD team. Within three days the OpenBSD developers had implemented full hot swap PCIe in the kernel and we were able to hot swap PCIe based ExpressCards on a desktop PC with no issues.

The ability to add an inexpensive PCIe to ExpressCard reader to and PCIe based Macs and have them hot swap is crucial with the emergence of the Sony/Sandisk SxS cards and the professional cameras using them. Apple could easily become the premier platform for ingesting and processing these cards. We doubt it will be any more trouble for Apple to implement PCIe hot swap in the kernel than it was for the OpenBSD team.

[1] Important to remind people that ExpressCard is a dual bus standard. For slow and simple minded devices, ExpressCard employs USB 2.0. For high performance and complex applications ExpressCard utilizes PCIe. The ExpressCard standard effectively defines no new busses, it merely provides a different form factor and set of connectors for the existing PCIe and USB 2.0 standards.