PCMCIA

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PCMCIA is an older standard for laptops, which stood for “Personal Computer Memory Card International Association”. Originally, PCMCIA cards were intended to expand the memory of a mobile pc. It wasn’t long, however, until laptop engineers figured out how to use the standard interface to hook up to other things, like modems, network cards, and hard disks.

There are 3 types of PCMCIA card: Type I, Type II, and Type III, which physically differ mostly in thickness. Most current laptops provide a single Type II PCMCIA slot, since most users now have access to USB devices for external modems or disk drives. The CompactFlash specification is electrically compatible with PCMCIA Type I, so a simple adaptor will be enough to connect a CompactFlash memory card to a laptop.

The newest replacement for PCMCIA is called CardBus, and is has a slightly different shape to prevent CardBus peripherals from being plugged into a PCMCIA slot. CardBus is basically a PCI expansion, squeezed down to fit into the approximate size and shape of a type II PCMCIA. Where PCMCIA was a 16-bit bus, CardBus has a 32-bit bus and runs at a higher clock speed.



Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Memory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_drive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_drive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCMCIA

Next Page: Computer Memory Introduction

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