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Standard Brewing For PC Card Replacement 'Newcard'
winston_pr writes "The details on the successor to the PC Card is starting to take form with details being given in this article at Nikkei Japan. The standard is scheduled to be finalized in 2003, while the first PCs with NEWCARD slots are expected to ship in the second half of 2004. Will this mean the end of all these crazy SD-card connection based peripherals?"
same as the old.
In new computers, things will be smaller and faster.
Thanks!
My Ass hurts.
Yawn.
9 22 9&mode=thread&tid=137
a ne wcard.asp
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/21/202
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0302/03022103pcmci
NEWCARD (development codename)
Yeah, we all know that when it's finalized they'll call it cardXP.In the future, all spacecraft will be made of cheese.
Isn't this the wrong way to go about it? Usually the hardware is built and then the standard is derived from that, guaranteeing compatability. What if the standard requires something that turns out impossible to implement? Everything will be broken. We'd never have cool tech like FireWire, PCI, and SDRAM if hardware producers had to wait for a standard before they even started working on products.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
Will this mean the end of all these crazy SD-card connection based peripherals?
No, of course not. It just adds one more peripheral standard.
JeR
Can some informed person speculate as to what the purpose of a PC card is in the day of Firewire800? Does a PC card have better bus access or something? Is it a form factor issue (e.g. its not dangling but is sort of part of the laptop?) With laptops getting smaller and PC-cards tending to get larger and bulging outside the chasis, the form factor issue looks less distinct to me. so why PC cards?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
This is a new standard to replace the old standard being created by the same association (PCMCIA) as the old standard. This new standard will allow gigabit ethernet on a card and will be much slimmer than the old cards. They are also talking about making it built into slimline desktops.
I hope they avoid similar problems that plagued ISA / PCI motherboards.
As I recall there were a lot of timing issues with the PCI / ISA bridge which affected system performance.
Most modern laptops seem to come with an array of smartmedia, compact flash, USB, Firewire, integrated 802.11, and integrated ethernet, so I don't see what the big deals is. Granted, it's nice to be able to swap things into the computer, bit if excessive numbers of dongles are going to be required, just give me the device in USB or firewire, and let the device be the dongle. That way I don't have to carry around this metal wafer-type box too.
the only two PCMCIA devices that I use on my laptop regularly (which is two years old or more) is the wireless ethernet adapter, which doesn't have a dongle as such, and the compact flash reader, because the laptop is too old to have these features built in. Next unit I buy will probably have them integrated.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Someday, the peripheral that hardware and software makers may want on all PCs is the Credit Card reader.
Want your next Windows Update? Please insert your Credit Card into the reader. What, this is Linux? SCO needs another swipe of your card, please.
Why stop there? I can see it now: "CNN... the most trusted... and expensive... name in news."
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Hmmm so PCMCIA cards are being phased out next year .. and PCI slots are already on the gone list for next year ( express PCI ) ...
I guess they need to make everything obsolete to sell more hardware and keep the PC market afloat.
Next round of software will be the same: It will require some special hardware components only available in the new machines ( can you say 'trusted computing'? )
Bah.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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It's a pet peeve of mine when people call something the New Whatever. It sounds like it is planned for obsolesce. Like they don't think anyone will use the standard or equipment after 3 years.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I have not noticed the bandwidth limits of my pcmcia card. Granted I don't run a gig-bit ethernet, video equipment (firewire takes care of it), or scsi cards, but I don't use my laptop to do that kind of stuff. What I have noticed is the slowness of my laptop hard drive, which will not be able to handle all this new bandwith anyways. Though it is always nice to have more bandwith and smaller cards, there are more important things that need to addressed.
P.S.
I hope this NEWCARD uses less power.
Most other peripherals can be attached externally via usb or firewire.
Not long to wait then!
Second half of 2004 is still some time away. I see all kind of devices around me in the shape of SD Cards or Sony Memory Stick, from modems to GPS cards. Mini Memory Stick works in my phone. It wouldn't be the first new standard that didn't make it because there was already something else that did the job and had the marketshare.
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People Can't Memorise Complex Irritating Acronyms
arnt we talking about lappy's here not desktops?
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Heh, so much for RTF! I saw the words "Standard Brewing" in the subject and without bothering to read further immediately clicked through to a story I thought was going to be about one of my favourite subjects - beer! I was not amused ...
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
PCs have stayed pretty much the same because the majority of PC owners want something upgradable, and something they can fix themselves without a 200x jewelers loupe and nerves of steel.
Various folks have tried the iMac concept, IBMs little goofy thingamajoo comes to mind (was it the S series?) People dont have a problem with the standard sized box, and slots they can use.
MicroPCs have their place, and that niche will expand. But I cant see any reason I would want my main desktop to be anything but what it is, something I can put together and take apart by myself without a lot of headache.
I've built a couple flexATX form factor PCs for my kids, and they're fun, but it's a bitch to work even that small, I wouldnt want to work with anything much smaller. My big tower desktop, I can replace a video card or add a HDD in about 2 minutes.
If it ain't broke, dont fix it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Did anyone else read the headline and think this was about some kind of peripheral that calibrates beer-making machines?
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I did not get further than "Standard Brewing" before I thought of RFC 2324, namely the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol.
Step one create a new standard and milk the licensing as long as your can.
Step two repeat step one.
Now driver support will become even crappier since the same number of engineers will be split across NEWCARD and PCI versions of every new product for several years.
I suggest that it be a licensing requirement for NEWCARD devices that the details of how to access the cards functionality be published.
At least the open source community has a fighting chance of providing the kind of support that most card manufacturers ought to be.
Floppy disk: $.10
CD-R: $.50
256 MB SD Card: $50
Wifi PCMIA card: $50
Having to keep up with the standards: priceless
For everything else, there is NewCard
its actually one where 'you can have two of three' works fairly well.
That really is the purpose of the newcard. Plug and play peripherals which can plug in on the desktop, while the rest of the PC is located under the desktop.
From the article:The concept for the NEWCARD Console, an external peripheral allowing expansion cards to be swapped in and out easily, was also shown. The idea is to have only the display, keyboard, mouse and NEWCARD Console on the desktop, with the PC main unit made as small as possible and stored under the desk or otherwise out of the way.
Do you know what's SOOOOO great about standards??
There's sooooooo many to choose from!!
(PoOO! Tang!!) Thankyou Thankyou. I'll be here all night.
its actually one where 'you can have two of three' works fairly well.
/.. Pick one. You know which one...
No, this is
Because then ytou'd have craptastic mobo's like Intel Itanium made for nVidia chipset.
Trust me, none of these companies would want to make something that simple.
Remember NuBus? For Mac, which now use PCI, it's the OldBus.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
because there are millions of laptops that are not equipped with USB 2 ports. Thats why there are PCMCIA USB 2 cards.
Many laptops have only 1 USB port( those made before 2002).
If you already have a USB mouse, where can you plug in that webcam, USB external keyboard etc?
Many laptops made before 2002 do not have Firewire ports. If you want to use the iPod and camcorders, you need a Firewire PCMCIA card.
Take 56k modems and 10/100 ethernet ports. Again, older laptops do not have them onboard. You need PCMCIA cards for that.
Then you have the case of wi-fi. Unless your laptop is a Centrino, there is no way of going wifi without a wireless card.
Firewire 800 is "only" in the Macs now. It might come to the PC soon but it will take a while to come to laptops(~6 months). Firewire 400 is the norm for laptops.
Doubleplusgood!
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Theres more to the video card than just the GPU, you'd need a new RAMDAC for higher resolutions and faster refresh rates and whatnot, and the memory interfaces video cards use get faster and faster, so that's probably not practical.
But I'm with you in concept.
I've always wondered why the northbridge and southbridge cant be socketed. What technically would prevent me from pulling the SiS 645dx chip out of the computer I'm using now, replace it with a pin compatable 648 that will let me use the fancy new HT enabled processors?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
While that may be true today, dont be suprised if in the near future the 'homeland security' department will mandate you use 'approved hardware and software' before you can get online. And use of anything other will be considered criminal...
Then watch it expand to other conutries..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
-1: We already know what a joke linux "device support" is.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I beleive you want an Nforce2 chipset it's not socketed but todays new PC owner dosent change out there video card. But otherwise slots are usefull for neatness sake if nothing else and high speed busses. The fastest external connector is firewire 800 at 100MB a sec half duplex (Not entirly sure ont hat bit) It cant deal with GigE speeds. PCI at base does 132MB a sec and can clock much faster and wider currently to around 1024MB a sec thats 4 GigE adapters running full out to get buss saturation. And most systems that implement PCI-X run multiple buses of it for more potential speed. Firewire 800 is porbably fast enough for nearly everything a home users needs to do except gigabit networking but dosent scale to servers.
No sir I dont like it.
For those who can't be bothered to read the article, the new interface is basically USB + PCI-Express. This means that 2 new things become possible; cards that can use the USB interface become very cheap so we should see a load of cheaper devices appearing as cards. Secondly, PCI-Express cards are possible.
One thing I was wondering is, is there any chance people could fit a graphics card into this form factor. Then you could upgrade the graphics of too-slow laptops.
ObWho: "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss"
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
Socketing the NB/SB likely wouldn't be worth it, you couldn't do more than minor changes. With new features like Serial ATA, 32-64-128 bit interfaces, DDR, and the like, pinouts change and layout of the traces can be critical.
Sure, people could try to plan ahead but it would add cost now, and historically doesn't work out because things move too fast to anticipate everything.
True, new features cant really be added, but it might be worth it to support faster CPUS and RAM. Like my 645 example would let me use a fancy shmancy new CPU, perhaps with an 800mhz bus, and true DDR400. A 50 dollar upgrade rather than a 200 dollar mobo replacement.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
'cos that is bound to be better and cheaper
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I predict that within 100 years computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
But you're moving the guts of the PC out of the PC. Now you get an integrated nic, graphics and sound mobo, and storage. Everything else will plug into the Newcard hub.
So now all you need is a small form-factor box strapped under your desk, with all the peripherals on your desktop. How well this is going to work is beyond me, but the possibility is there.
Sounds strikingly familiar to NUBUS.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Firewire800 would be a cool idea, and to eliminate the bulge, why not add a new "compact card" interface standard to firewire800?
You can then have your internal, PC-card-style card, except it connects internally to a firewire800 bus. No unsightly bulges.
You could make an external adapter to plug the cards into on machines that only had external firewire ports; such a system could even be used to bridge (albeit clumsily) new "firewire compact card" devices into a machine with standard PC cards: add firewire PC card, connect external firewire card adapter to firewire port, lather, rinse repeat.
Other than desktop-system bus (PCI-X or whatever the new PCI bus is called these days), its unfortunate we can't standardize on a good internal/external bus standard like Firewire.
IIRC old macs had a slot called a "NuCard" slot. Just a bit-o-trivia.
-Chip Frisby
US PC manufacturers promoting NEWCARD hope to use the new media in desktop machines as well as notebooks. Chuck Stancil, Personal Systems Group, PC Desktop R&D, Advanced Technology Business at HP, is eager: "Cases for desktop machines are shrinking steadily, too, and the smaller we can make an expansion slot, the better." Didn't they say that for PCCARD as well? Would be nice to drop the screwdriver, but what aout the price-difference?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Okay, let me provide some predictions here and now. Manufacturers will create NEWCARD (the lamest code name since "Project Pink") slots which support either only one or the other, and users will have endless headaches because certain devices won't work. "It says NEWCARD on it, why won't it work! This stupid scribble-pad has a NEWCARD slot on it, right!?"
Creating USB 2.0 peripherals that slip into a slot is only going to create yet another annoying connectivity product, an external USB-only NEWCARD addon for USB 2.0-equipped PCs. Of course, it will (as I just said) be USB-only, so only some devices will work, and likely not all of those which use the USB interface for communication, because I am willing to bet that some of those cards will get some other signal off the other bus, perhaps for additional power.
While supporting USB 2.0 makes sense from the standpoint that it will make it easier to make some types of peripherals into NEWCARD devices (If only I could put a variable in here, $REAL_NAME_OF_NEWCARD) it will in the end lead to confusion on the part of consumers. Computers are supposed to be getting easier to use.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I saw it was a type, after I read it as coconutries the first time...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
1. why even make it socketed? Just build it in completely. The card matches the MB anyway, and by the time a new card comes out, its gonna require AGP10x or a newer model CPU anyway.
2. No because thats too much engineering for 1 company. Specialization is what is bringing all the great advancements. So as long as we can break out the video card, their will be more advancement.
3. You are better knowing the price for each individual piece and paying for them individually then paying one lump sum. The smaller you can break it down, the less money they can hide from your notice. Remember that when they try to add your tax and insurance into your mortgage payment.
typo...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
This is a great naming scheme! I hope whoever came up with this name in the Marketing dept. got a good raise...
NEWCARD 2 years later
NEWERCARD soon
NEWESTCARD and then
NEWERTHANTHENEWESTCARD after that
BRANDSPANKINNEWCARD a while later
SHINYNEWCARD eventually
NEWASCANBECARD
At least it is better than Fullspeed, Highspeed and Doublespeed.
-Adi Gadwale.
PC-Cards really should be put on the USB bus, with a special (flat) connector.
Really, is there any reason *NOT* to do this? That way, PC-Cards can be slid in and out "hot", just like USB stuff can be. This also reduces R&D, cost to delivery, and the USB standard is already well supported, allowing manufacturers of existing USB stuff to come out with "card" versions of their stuff.
Can anybody think of a reason why this wouldn't work?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
All standards will revert to the following names:
PCMCIA: Newcard Low Speed
CardBus: Newcard Full speed
Newcard: Newcard High Speed
Thank you for your time.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Am I the only one craving a coconut brownie after all this talk about Coconut Trees?
Won't the NEWCARD standard be old in a couple of
years?
Anything with "new" in it's name is doomed, because soon it's no longer new and then the name is contradictory.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
They neglect a lot of important things in these standards. Foremost, they neglect Linux when creating these standards. Most of these standards become proprietary licensed patents and the hardware they are based on them only has drivers written for Windows by the hardware manufacturers.
Secondly, we need standards for things like CD/DVD burners, drives, and bus architectures and many other things that lately seem to more commonly cause hardware conflicts than not. I am having a conflict with my EHCI and OHCI, along with my DVD-RW drive and one of my firewire busses. Are these guys too lazy to implement standards correctly? If they don't start doing this, standards will mean absolutely nothing. When you leave out part of the standard in your implementations, you are causing problems for everyone.
The other thing is that we need to come up with a replacement for the basic layout of motherboards. We shouldn't have jumpers on boards -- everything should be "jumpered" in Bios. They could replace those jumpers with non-volatile flip-flops or SCRs if they need it close to the devices it jumpers. We need a replacement for the pins for the case front headers like the speaker pins, etc. I believe we should just have one large connector that fits over a whole bank of pins. If you aren't using a pin, you just don't connect it to anything on the motherboard, but the pins will always be in standard locations. That way you can just connect one large connector to the board instead of tons of little connectors. I don't know about you, but my hands are not small enough to be able to do this easily. I'm sick of a mess of power connectors in my case. There has to be a better way to do this.
When it comes to processors to save space on motherboards, they should start using tiny slotted (I don't mean like slot-1 but like a tiny fcpga chip that has all its connectors as a slot) processors with two sided fans that slip over them like a sleeve. This would also mean they could cool both sides of the die.
When it comes to external devices, I'm sick of the mess of power cords. I believe that these devices should have DC power inputs and you should be able to run a daisy chained power cord between all of them.
There are a million things they could fix with computers standards, but before they make computers faster and more powerful, they should tackle the problem of the fact that a lot of the devices within computers like jumpers, connectors, and external devices still use ancient methods that are suboptimal at best. What good is Firewire and USB when you still must run power cords to all your large external devices? They need to look at the big picture more.
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
Why are all these standards created behind closed doors? They should get more input from users of their hardware.
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
...video resolutions
Video Graphics Adapter
Super Video Graphics Adapter
eXtended Graphics Adapter
Ultra eXtended Graphics Adapter
And with the funny little laptops, they've sometimes added a W for Wide too... so you have something like
Wide Ultra eXtended Graphics Adapter - WUXGA
Face it, "super" VGA isn't that super anymore, and the resolution is just as easy to understand. Never understood why they started with those Friendly But Useless Abbriviations (FBUA) in the first place.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The advantage is that instead of hanging off the back of your computer, a Newcard device goes inside the computer and takes up less space.
Labeling technology with superlative names is a dumb idea. When it gets outdated it sounds stupid. When a 'supercollider' is surpassed, what do you call its replacement? When things NEWCARD is slow, creaky, and obsolete, what do you call it's replacement? NEWERCARD? EVENNEWERCARD? This isn't my idea, many people have said it. It's just a bad idea to name things in that fashion.
Part of me thinks the PC slot is cousin the the cartridge slot on old Tandys, C64s, Atari 800s, etc. It's outlived it's usefullnes on new machines. New laptops come with on-board modems, ethernet, wi-fi, firewire, etc. While I understand this is somewhat short-sighted of me, I can't help asking, "What the hell PC card does anyone need today anyway?" Oh yeah, and computers will never need more than 4GB ram.