Is PCMCIA Dead as a technology

[ikonia]

Its looking very likley

PCMCIA was only ever really used in laptops, but as technologies move on a lot of the hardware that pcmcia used to supply is now intergrated.

Modems, Network cards, Wirless to name but a few. Options like bluetooth are often now supplied on USB devices.

The only use I can think left is 3G style cards or other propritary hardware requirements.

[charleski]

PCMCIA has a peak bandwidth of 132MB/s.
USB 2 has a theoretical peak of 60MB/s, but because of scheduling conflicts can usually only manage 40MB/s.
Bandwidth requirements are only going to go up.

So I can see PCMCIA going on bottom-end laptops, but there will enough of a demand for it for some time higher up the scale, where people want to hook up less common devices. Also, it's cheap.

[Funkstar]

It's a shame they are being replaced quickly with ExpressCards as there is still a great lack of cards for this new format, especially in the mobile wireless segment.
http://www.expresscard.org/web/site/

[WLC-1989]

Talk of the devil

I have quite a few PCMCIA cards, such as a 4 port USB 2.0 adaptor, flash card reader and more. Bought a PCMCIA PCI-Card adaptor today, so that I can use those cards on my desktop; hopefully, it'll give me some use for these cards that my new laptop doesn't support (it too uses CardBus).

[dave87]

Damned Dell & their adoption of Express Cards - utterly useless, as the only things I could concievably want to put in it are either

a) already built in
b) not yet available in express cards

[Agent]

Damned Dell & their adoption of Express Cards - utterly useless, as the only things I could concievably want to put in it are either

a) already built in
b) not yet available in express cards

Sounds like PCI vs PCIe.
One of the latest Abit boards has 1 PCI and a bunch of PCIe slots. Why....

[Funkstar]

Indeed. I opted for this board when building my MediaPortal box as all three DVB-T cards are PCI. Unfortunitely it looks like by the time i come to replace this in a few years, i'll either struggle to find a board with PCI slots or i'll need to get completely new expansion cards. Perhaps i should have found a board with at least a few PCI slots and a couple of PCIe instead.

oh well

[directhex]

Indeed. I opted for this board when building my MediaPortal box as all three DVB-T cards are PCI. Unfortunitely it looks like by the time i come to replace this in a few years, i'll either struggle to find a board with PCI slots or i'll need to get completely new expansion cards. Perhaps i should have found a board with at least a few PCI slots and a couple of PCIe instead.

oh well

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=337843 - room for three DVB cards , a CI daughterboard, a high-end RAID controller, and a graphics card. woo!

[Kezzer]

You'd be surprised how long old tech lasts. I still have to give Exchange 5.5 support to customers, and yes, there are many, many customers who still use Exchange 5.5 because it simply works. It's not a matter of what's better nowadays, if it works, and is cheap then people generally stick with it

[ikonia]

there is a difference between software longevity and hardware development

[Spud1]

You'd be surprised how long old tech lasts. I still have to give Exchange 5.5 support to customers, and yes, there are many, many customers who still use Exchange 5.5 because it simply works. It's not a matter of what's better nowadays, if it works, and is cheap then people generally stick with it

Well all the big supermarkets still run all their backend till/price control systems on Windows 3.11 (not even NT, just plain on 3.11 for workgroups)..so theres proof that if something works, they keep it Granted the tills are now running either win98 or XP (depending on which of the supermarkets it is, and which store) but I doubt they will upgrade the backend systems for a while..

PCMCIA will be here for a while yet I think expresscards look to be the replacement in my opinion, but not until there are enough devices to take advantage at the correct pricepoint..

[[GSV]Trig]

I've got a 4mb PCMCIA Card, ised it on my Amiga, still got it around somewhere

[Neo_VR]

I've got a 4mb PCMCIA Card, ised it on my Amiga, still got it around somewhere

Them were the days... when that memory was "fast" memory and did wonders to the speed of a amiga a600/a1200 i rember being blown away by the performance increase it gave lightwave..