[ale] Ask Mr. RetroScience: PCMCIA I?/II?/III?

[Raylynn Knight]

On Wed, 2004-10-20 at 09:38, John Mills wrote:
> Ray -
> 
> Thanks. You've given my answer.
> 
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Raylynn Knight wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 22:52, John Mills wrote:
> > > Gurus and Guresses -
> > > 
> > > I came home with a D-Link model DWL-650, 802.11b PC Card Adapter (i.e,
> > > wireless NIC) for a "PC Card Type II" slot in a ">= 300MHz Pentium" laptop
> > > [it says on the box].
> 
> > Is it a CardBus (i.e 32 bit card) or a PCMCIA (ie. 16 bit card).  That
> > may be more relevant.
> 
> 
> The box also says, "High-Performance 16-bit PC Card".
> 
> > Most likely your Toshiba has PCMCIA (16 bit) slots not CardBus.  In
> > which case you don't want to try to force the card into the slot.
> 
> That something else I didn't know: "CardBus" not being physically
> interchangeable with PCMCIA. I've been wondering whether all those terms
> were 'marketingspeak' or reflected actual differences. My 'Google' shot
> didn't get me a clear answer - not one I recoginized, anyway.
> 
It's truly amazing how many technically oriented people don't know
this.  There is an actual difference.  PCMCIA is 16-bit technology, when
the advance to 32-bit came about they modified the slot so that the
32-bit slot could still use 16-bit cards, but 32-bit cards won't fit
into a 16-bit slot.  The CardBus terminology was coined refer to the
32-bit cards and slots.
> 
> Sounds like I have pretty good hopes the end-of-life card will run in my 
> back-from-death Toshiba.
> 
> Regards.
> 
>  - John Mills
>    john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu
> 
> 
>