StarTech.com, who sent us the 750W 80PLUS power supply, also sent us two other interesting products. One of them will be revealed this week in an upcoming review, but the other is giving us a little trouble. The product in particular bridges a PCI-Express x1 slot to a dual-profile ExpressCard interface. While the product resides in a PCI-Express slot, I believe it only uses the slot to draw power. Reason being, there’s also a USB interface for the card.

There are two options for the USB interface: motherboard headers, or USB A-to-B cable that would plug in the front or rear of your case. No matter which interface I opt for, no changes appear in Vista, XP, or Linux, and I’ve tested the card on two different Intel machines. My last option is try it on my AMD machine, but I don’t think it’ll help, either.

LEDs on the card come on when a card is inserted, but no visible hardware changes are made in software. The adapter is simply not detected. I’m going to try the card on an AMD-base machine, but if anyone has any experience with such an adapter, help would greatly be appreciated.

Why is it so difficult to bridge PCI-Express to ExpressCard without the USB support?