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PCMCIA Announces NEWCARD Format
schnoz writes "Found this over at DPReview: "The PCMCIA technology association has today announced the 'NEWCARD' format. This new format makes use of PC Card, PCI Express and USB 2.0 technologies. The NEWCARD format is also aimed at both Mobile and Desktop PCs". Check out the rest of the article here."
Read the article. They've made it possible to cram 2 cards in one slot by making a half-width card. Standard size cards aren't being eliminated.
Actually, I don't see why it wouldn't be compatible with current software. Most OSs already can handle hot-swapping of PCMCIA / USB devices, certainly they could easily handle an entire system of similar devices.
I could swear I read something about an entirely card-based computer maybe 6 years ago. I remember retelling what I had read to friends over and over, about the possibility of easily installing all of your hardware by just sliding it into some external slot.
Everytime I install hardware into current PCs, I always end up losing screws or cutting my hands on those metal spikes that line the bottom of PCI cards. If I dread installing hardware into my own PC, how could anyone expect normal folks like my mom to be able to do it? It's clear we have a long way to go. Everything should be as easy as PCMCIA.
PCMCIA is ISA. Cardbus is PCI.
It's Personal Memory Card International Association, but nobody cares.
No, I don't know where that extra C came from.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I don't see why anyone would add the ports without adding the hardware to use them, but otherwise, it's a good idea. PCMCIA-style devices in the back of a PC would make life easier for upgrades and the like.
I'd love to be able to plug 6 or 7 PCMCIA cards in the back of a desktop, for example, and upgrade from 10 Mbit Ethernet to 100 Mbit without rebooting, or drop in a modem in an emergency. Some of these features wouldn't work very well with Type II cards, but a load of Type III slots would work wonderfully.
Of course, the main issue is, as always, one of engineering. Bus speeds increase over time. PCMCIA can't handle anything close to 100Mbit/sec, so I've got a Cardbus Ethernet Adapter instead. Gigabit might eventually become an option, or Firewire 800, and then we'll need a new bus *anyway.*
You'd need an expansion backplane to handle this properly, such that you would crack open the box, replace the backplane, and then you can support the next PCMCIA standard. Of course, ideas like this have been done before, and tend to fail miserably for consumers, if only because they're too expensive to implement.
There are a handful of desktops that have had PCMCIA slots, though. DEC Multias come to mind, although I'm sure that there are others. It's a good concept, although it's apparently just not useful enough to take off.
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Why didn't they choose FireWire 800 or something like an AGP type i/o so that video card PC cards could be ultrafast?
Well, you can only have one AGP slot, and who wants to handle 30+ watts coming from a plugin card? Anyway, If you support 64bit/66MHz PCI, then you can just plug a Firewire card in.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Good summary from the BBC
Techie details from EE Times
What difference does it make? USB 2.0 is faster than almost any device you might care to connect through it.
Plus, Firewire isn't some much of the hack that USB is
Again, who cares? Both FW and USB2 work fine, and USB2 support in operating systems is really simple (because most of it is just like USB1).
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
It refers to data bus size. It's using a single PCI-Express lane for data transfer. If devices in the future require more bandwidth, more lanes can be added without much effort (first PCI-E graphics cards, for example, will be using a 16-lane bus which works in the exact same way.. except it has 16 lanes)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Gigabit ethernet has a maximum transfer rate of 128MB/s. The PCI bus can handle up to 132MB/s. Read this: http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/infobrf/ibpci.html That completely aside, this does not use the PCI bus. It uses PCI-Express or USB 2.0 (decided by the particular NEWCARD in question). PCI-Express can do 10GB/s in either direction (the NEWCARD will be limited to 2.5GB/s) while USB 2.0 can handle up to 400megabit/s. There is also no need for gigabit NICs to need heatsinks. There is a HUGE market for these things in the portable computing world. In the future, please read the specs before commenting.