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7/13/2007
#13473
724-746-5500 blackbox.com
The Personal Computer Memory Card International
Association (PCMCIA) is an organization that is chartered with
establishing, marketing, and maintaining a series of hardware
and software standards for credit card-sized, integrated-circuit
PC cards.
PCMCIA cards are your laptop’s mobile link to the outside
world. You can use them to send last-minute data files from
the airport to the office. Then you can link your laptop to
connect to a branch office’s Ethernet port.
The PCMCIA standard specifies a removable device measur-
ing 2.126" x 3.37" (5.4 x 8.6 cm)—basically the size of three
stacked credit cards. PCMCIA cards have 68 pins and interface
with both 8- and 16-bit buses. They also support physical
access of up to 64 MB of memory.
PCMCIA cards provide universal expansion capability for
laptop computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs). These
tiny cards can support a wide variety of functions including
faxmodem capabilities, mass storage, and memory extension
for host machines.
PCMCIA enables you to choose the memory and I/O devices
(LAN adapters, faxmodems, disk drives, etc.) that you need
most. You are not restricted to using cards that work with only
a specific computer make or model.
The three types of PCMCIA slots are defined by the thickness
of the card that fits in them. All card types are backward
compatible.
Type I cards are 3.3-mm thick. They’re used primarily in PD
As as RAM, flash memory, electrically erasable programmable
read-only memory (EEPROM), and one-time programmable
memory (OTP).
Type II cards are 5-mm thick and are fully I/O-capable. You
can use them for memory enhancements or for I/O features in
modems, LAN connections, and host communications.
Type III cards measure 10.5-mm thick. They’re designed
primarily for removable hard drives and radio communication
devices that require a larger size. They can also be used for
memory enhancements.
Technically Speaking
Type I and II extended cards are identical to the regular
cards except they’re 50 mm longer. These cards are used in
applications that need components outside of the systems
or that simply need more room for internal components.
Plug PCMCIA cards into a host socket/adapter on the
computer’s motherboard or connect them to its expansion
bus. The socket side has the standard 68-pin interface for the
card. The adapter side translates the PCMCIA interface signals
to match the computer’s bus standards.
Socket Services 2.0 is the software interface between
the card in the socket and the adapter to the computer’s bus.
The standard Socket Services interface is what permits the use
of any PCMCIA card on any PC equipped with a socket/adapter.
The programming interface for PCMCIA is called Card
Services 2.0. It sends the signals to link Socket Services to the
PC’s operating system and hardware.
Card Information Structure (CIS) contains information
about how the card functions, its size, its electrical require-
ments, and so on. On card insertion, the card passes this
identifying information to the host system.
The system software reads the CIS data on insertion, installs
the appropriate drivers, notifies relevant system resources,
and initializes the card to make it available for use by the
host.
There have been three major PCMCIA releases since the
inception of the PCMCIA organization in 1989. PCMCIA
Release 1.0 set the specification for a PC card, offering
memory capabilities for mobile computing. Release 2.0
broadened the spec to include mass storage, modem, LAN,
cellular and radio frequency communications peripherals.
Release 2.1 enhanced the Card and Socket Services specs, and
made improvements to the CIS. All standards are backward
compatible.