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Next-gen PCMCIA: Expresscard
An anonymous reader writes "According to this article at WindowsForDevices, the PCMCIA trade association rolled out version 1.0 of its next-generation standard for modular mobile and desktop computer expansion at this week's Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, CA. Dubbed "ExpressCard", the new standard is "thinner, lighter, faster" than the group's previous PC Card standards, according to PCMCIA chairman Brad Saunders. ExpressCard achieves its space reduction by replacing the legacy parallel buses of the first and second generation PCMCIA card standards with state-of-the-art, high-speed serial connections, following a trend common in current computer system design."
The PC Card bus is the only decent feature of PCMCIA. The size of the cards is a joke, despite "there are also some applications which have a physical requirement for the wider module, such as CompactFlash card readers, security card readers, and 1.8-inch rotating media". The embedded industry is moving towards SD/MMC cards as the standard storage memory module. What's most interesting about SD/MMC is that it is based on a serial bus, not the PCMCIA cardbus. So PCMCIA's influence is actually declining.
But they now designed a new bus which will replace cardbus. It remains to be seen whether anyone is interested in this technology. It may be too little to late. PCMCIA's day has passed, and these new gigantic cards aren't going to save them.
Or is it just for notebooks?
Cover your eyes and click this link!
PCMCIA: People Cannot Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So, will this by "High speed" PC-Card or "Full speed" PC-Card?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
They should have just used a PCI-X bus with a goddamn CARDEDGE CONNECTOR. You can support 1x, or 16x as you like, but do away with those stupid pins. Alternately I could see using some high-speed form of firewire, which may be easier to implement, especially since you could have it run down to normal (400Mbps) 1394 speeds. And yes, I know about 800Mbps firewire, and that 1 and 1.6Gbps flavors are both on the horizon.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ugh. Remember the first PCMCIA cards, specifically the modems and the NICs? Remember the horrible, easy-to-lose dongles, and the fragile and unreliable pop-out connectors? Remember how THEN double-height PCMCIA cards came into vogue, since they were actually big enough to fit on some real connectors? And now it's back to the teeny cards all over again. I can understand a small form factor for pocket PCs, but SD/SM/CF/whatever more than fill the niche for solid state storage, and CF also can do everything else, rather adroitly. And it isn't as though the digital road warriors among us are staggering under the weight of current PCMCIA cards, even the ones that are (HORROR!) big enough to stick an RJ-45 into. In conclusion, who the hell cares about form factor?
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
of course, there's the question of when you refer to PCMCIA if you're refering to the group, or the original memory card standard.
Now, as memory, yes, there are plenty of other standards, but there's the question of which one a computer manufacturer should standardize on -- portables put out by a company that also makes flash memory has a bias (ie, sony), but with an intermediary connection type, you can easily add additional capabilities to your computer, so that it can read the old legacy format that you're using in your digital camera.
And that's the key point -- adding additional capabilities. Not many people used PCMCIA [which as we all remember, means 'People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms'] for memory, but for modems, ethernet cards, SCSI connections, etc -- the sorts of things that a computer manufacturer decided the general public didn't need, but that you decided that you wanted.
With built-in modems commonplace, and there not being the whole X2/kFlex/kFlex/v.90 issues anymore, and no one's upgrading their internal 9600 baud modem, or getting a hardware based modem to replace their softmodem, modems aren't the key. And you don't need a 10bT or 100bT card to get on your LAN, as I haven't seen any new systems out there that didn't have 100 or better built in these days. Even wireless is starting to move to built in, and it's standardized, so most of 'em work together, or as reasonably as can be expected.
But that's the magic thing about PCMCIA, or whatever they want to call the slots this week -- we don't have to know what it's for. It's like the cigarette lighter in your car -- you can plug whatever the hell you want into it -- cell phone charger, power inverter, portable CD player, laptop, radar detector, hell, even a cigarette lighter. It's something that computer manufacturers can place into their systems to enable the consumer to have a choice of flexability.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
So what we have here are two cards of different widths, with a connector that's the same width. Here's what'll happen:
1) People will accidentally buy 54mm cards without realizing it won't fit in their 34mm slots
2) When you put a 34mm card in your 54 mm slot, your device will either have a big gap next to the card or will have to use an alkward and twice as expensive double door
3) The 22mm notch on the 54mm card will get caught on things and could possibly even be a weak point.
4) People won't realize that 34mm cards will work in their 54mm slot, or try to put it in on the wrong side, and such.
5) 5mm won't be thick enough for a variety of purposes
6) One of these card formats will be effectively abandoned (54mm) and the other will be widely adopted (34mm), obviating the work on the abandoned design and leaving a legacy of unsupported formats to confuse people on ebay auctions and such.
The logical thing to do would be what they do now: have single and double height cards, that work in a double slot.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
To make cards any thinner that Type 1 PC-Card's you need to use chip's with special packaging as standard surface mount components on a dual sided PCB just barely fits into a PC Card enclose. For instance most CF or smaller WiFi cards are a radio on chip solution which is generally more expensive than a design based around discrete components (at least initially, if you can get the paramaters right and the process down then ultimatly the single chip solution is probably cheaper). For ram you need to use the highest density chips available which tend to be expensive instead of a small aray of cheaper, less dense chips.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
How about a Compact Flash slot for your Laptop.
My PDA has a 802.11b in it's compact flash slot and I can get 4GB memory cards and GPS as well.
Small, cheap and already here. I want one on my Laptop. Without an adapter.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I am taking you more as a troll then anything.
You hate the standerd so you really dont' see a use for it. That may be, but who's to say that it doesn't have a use. (embedded etc)
There are a few incorrect things you have to say about sd/mmc SD is a parrellel technology while mmc is serial. (don't ask me how it works) As far as SD/MMC getting into embedded markets you are only correct in the consumer market (such things as palms/pda's/mp3 players).
Compact Flash still leads a healther life in the true embedded market (things like pc104/pc104plus, etc) If you have ever taken apart a pcmcia to compact flash adaptor you would see that it's pretty much straght through. So theres your smaller standerd right there.
You assumed too much. You didn't Think of other peoples uses. There are plenty of things this new standerd could go towards. But no you assume that since the cards are huge (I wonder is pci/agp/pci-x huge, if so wouldn't you want a new standerd like this for the desktop platforms?) They are of no use. Sure we could use sdio to replace pcmcia but making things that small cost's money..
So did you think before you posted.
I think it's getting a tad rediculous out there with all the different options of things I can shove in my portable. PC Cards, Express Cards, CF Cards, memory sticks, sd cards....etc on and on...I think the latest multi card readers I saw were 9 in 1. Do we really need that many different form factors?
You ALREADY are using the PCI-X interface, so you share that functionality with desktops. So now that laptop makers will have these larger slots they can plan for more comprehensive peripherals - like real tv tuner cards that support HD, higher capacity solid state/MRAM memory cards, etc.
So now you can actually build a complete PC - stuffed with truly useful cards that perform equally well on either platform - and you never have to open the case. We coyld have desktop systems that supports a full battery of "2x4" cards in the back, USB and Firewire and all the rest. And because the cards now can be used on either a desktop or laptop platform, peripheral makers have only ONE standard to support, which makes all their products both cheaper for the end user AND cheaper to produce.
But then what do I know? I don't even spell my name with a "u."
I can't figure out what application this would make sense for.
For desktop machines, these compact cards are too expensive (compared to dirt cheap PCI cards) so nobody will use this for adding devices to their desktop machines, just they way they don't use PCMCIA cards on desktop machines now.
For laptops, almost everything is built in. Ethernet, modem, wireless, optical drive.
And what isn't built in can be added using CF cards. Sure, very few laptops have CF card slots built in, but none of them have these new PC card slots built in. And CF is becoming pretty standard for adding new capabilities (bluetooth, 890.11, ethernet, etc.) to high-end PDA's. And manufacturers aren't going to replace CF card slots with these much larger cards.
And for more limited uses (RAM cards) there is SD/MMC.
So I think that it's more likely that manufacturers will start putting CF and SD/MMC slots into laptops than that they add these new card slots.
Rather than introduce a new slot for portable devices, why not introduce a decent expansion mechanism for _desktop_ computers? There, consumers have to unscrew cases, plug fragile cards into slots, etc., -- there would be some real benefit in a consumer friendly desktop expansion mechanism. If people could upgrade their video card (for example) by pulling a cartridge out of a slot and snapping in a new one, everyone wins! I don't think it'd cost much (plastic shell, doors and guides in the cases). Ditto for optical drives -- I've never understood by laptops can swap optical drives, etc., but not desktops. Sure, it'd cost a tiny bit more, but think how much easier it would be to sell upgrades to consumers if they didn't have to crawl into an electrified box!
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
PC cards suck. Why make us suffer all of the complexities of supporting a new form factor when all it is is the mix of two interface types that should stand on their own?
What's wrong with plain ol' USB2.0? It seems to be a well-defined spec with LOTS of products on the market. It's fast enough for the most common applications used with laptops:
- Netwroking (Ethernet, Modem, Wireless)
- External Storage (Drives, CD/DVD, Flash)
- Input/output devices (Scanners, Printers)
Instead of a PC card - supply four USB2 ports and a couple firewire ports in the same space.
Is it possible to make an external PCIX connector that doesn't limit developers to the form factor of a card? Could a PCIX connector on the back of a laptop be used to interface with docking bays of the future? an external dongle can convert PCIX to SCSI/FireWire/GigE/USB2/graphics or whatever high-speed application is needed.
-z
I just ordered a 15" PB that has a modem, network, wireless and Bluetooth built in. It has a PCMCIA slot that I'll most likely end up using for compact flash or if I get crazy, GPS?
I just don't see that much use for one anymore. Why a new form factor? Am I missing some killer app I haven't heard of?
Really, this dongle thing is getting out of hand...
Is it just simpler or something? Why would serial be any better/cheaper/easier to make then a similar parallel device? If the cost is relatively the same, and the bandwidth per wire is the same, and you aren't making long cables that you don't want a lot of wires in, doesn't it make more sense to throw some extra lines in there to double, quadruple, etc. the total throughput?
Things like PCI slots and PCMCIA cards and RAM it only seems to make more sense to use a wider bus, to me at least.
Morphing Software
Ever notice they usually get early PCCard history wrong?
The first generation of interoperable cards were JEIDA cards, which were memory and supplanted by the incompatible PCMCIA...
Since ExpressCard uses PCI Express as its primary bus, why is there a need for a USB interface? And why USB? Firewire is a much better choice.
And if use USB, why not also have FireWire?
This will definitely screw people over. The physical format is incompatible with older PCMCIA, PCCard, Cardbus cards.
Unlike before...
"thinner, lighter, faster"
Sounds good, but I just took a look at the handful of CardBus cards that I already own, and they're already plenty thin, plenty light, and plenty fast. I've never said to myself "Man, these CardBus cards are really weighing my bag down." They're already small enough that I often can't find them, and I really don't have a problem waiting the few seconds that it takes to transfer 128MB of digital photos to my PowerBook via a CardBus adapter.
Frankly, I'd strongly prefer that industry stick to the current standard, and instead focus on coming up with nifty new CardBus products that add new capabilities to the computers I already have. Let's have a very affordable data acquisition card, for example. (I know data acquisition cards are already available, but AFAIK they tend to be pretty pricey.) Or a card that measures air quality wherever I am, or analyzes chemical samples.
ExpressCard stinks to me of planned obsolescence.
Looks like we're entering a period full of standards-flux. Say goodbye to PCMCIA and AGP--those are the biggies. Is there going to be a time when the latest graphics card comes out in PCI, AGP and PCI-X (or whatever it's called) ? And why VGA if DVI? DVD-R not DVD+R, and 801.11a, or 11g? Make sure it's backward compatible with 11b! And so on! Post your favorite match-ups.
Hold on to your butts.
This article isn't a dupe, but Expresscard was code-named NEWCARD and was discussed on Slashdot a month ago.
Pretty long shake, eh.
The worst part is, it doesn't qualify for free shipping!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Today's laptops come standard with the stuff most people used to buy PC Cards for, i.e. modem/networking. What isn't built in already today, you can most likely just add via a USB peripheral, e.g. external hard drives, memory keys, and multi-format media card readers.
Sure, external devices are a little heavier/bulkier to carry around, but they're cheaper because they don't need super-miniaturized electronics to fit into the PC Card form factor. Also, you don't have to throw them out when you break or lose the chintzy dongle and find out that the asshole manufacturer doesn't sell replacement dongles, making your card useless. Another point in the favor of external USB devices is that you can use them on your desktop computer as well if you desire.
IMHO, the PC Card is an idea whose time has passed, and this "new, improved" thing will only serve to confuse people.
~Philly
Yep, a news group about amiga gamez. It's time to go a tro tro trollin. Fire up a copy of your favorite usenet reader, and head on over. The fun is just getting started.
Calling all trolls! Calling all trolls!
Get your jollies in a jiffy. comp.sys.amiga.games, theyre waiting for YOUR post!
Don't even get me started on this!
At these prices, the damn things better make me breakfast, you follow?
When has pushing the limits not been a part of computer development?
I hope that whatever standard they go with (does it really need to be smaller?) they'll make it a standard for desktops as well. Frankly, I'm sick of PCI. Lots of devices these days really don't need to be screwed in directly to the motherboard.
Maybe putting these particular bays on desktops isn't all that important, though it would be nice to have interoperable devices between desktop and laptop. But I would like to see PCI/AGP slots replaced with some sort of easy to install cartridge'esque approach. Imagine hot-swappable network and sound cards. Imagine popping that new Sound Blaster card into your laptop. I could keep going 'imagining', but I think the point is clear.
Wouldn't it be nice if the peripherals that worked on a desktop also worked on a laptop? That's more than possible today.
"Derp de derp."
I'm sick, and thus easily confused right now. I definitely meant PCI-Express. We certainly do have an exceptionally goofy soup (should that be gooey?) of stupid names right now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This new standard seems to be getting a lot of backlash. Most of it seems to be the fact that other cards exist.
Other cards that exit cannot achieve the same speed as expresscard. As wonderful as integrated devices into your laptop are, you don't always get what you want. Gigabit Ethernet is one such technology that I haven't seen much of, consumer wise, until recently. You simply can't run 100Mbit Ethernet on an old ISA bus. However it works out nicely with 32-bit pci bus slots. SD, MMC, CF, PCMCIA, etc... don't have what it takes to run gigabit Ethernet.
also, remember that originally, it was slow modems and nic's that began with pcmcia, but because the standard grew and offered more, you now have wireless, gps, memory readers, etc... with time, there should be new technologies introduced to this new standard just as it happened before - because now a standard exists that permits further growth.
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
"The great thing about standards, is that there are so many to choose from"
www.rexguo.com - Technologist + Designer
Hum, does anyone know why most buses are moving towards serial interface these days? For example, serial-ata, firewire, usb, and now this. I would think that a parallel bus would be faster than a similarly clocked serial bus? Like 4 bytes of data in 1 cycle vs 1 byte/cycle and 4 clock cycles. Maybe there is a problem with clocking parallel buses very high? Anyone have any ideas about this?
seriously... no more cards.
firewire or usb. that's it. preferably not even usb. everything can be adapted to the firewire bus. that's it. end of story.
it's an organization looking for a reason to keep existing.
we do need cards because i dont like having dongles sticking out 1 1/2" behind a laptop. it skews everything. most cards can fit entirely inside a pcmcia slot (especialy thoughs wi-fi cards with retractable antennas)
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
It seems that everyone is complaining about the dimentions, and forgetting to complain about the bus...
Basically, this is just a USB2 port with a different connector. How in the hell does that make sense to anyone???
How well do you think your Firewire card is going to perform? That's right, not too damn well. They are actually going to a SLOWER and smaller standard, rather than a faster one, which is incredibly stupid IMHO.
In fact, the only reason I can think that anyone would want to do this, is because it would make USB2 far more common, AND since nothing would possibly go faster than USB2 speeds, it takes away ALL reasons to use any peripherals using any interface other than USB2...
Gee... Your firewire card on your notebook is slower than USB2. Guess we must surrender to Intel, and buy nothing but USB2 devices.
This whole Intel world-domination thing is giving me a big headache. Now notebooks don't have PS/2 connectors anymore, and USB Keyboards/Mouse have serious problems. So we are going from faster, more reliable technologies, to slower, less-reliable ones, just because that's what Intel wants. Screw 'em... I'm going to find a Firewire mouse if it's the last thing I do.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
DrunkPost++;
Come on this a lawsuit waiting to happen. American Express will sue them for the use of there trademark.
OK, this whole thing confuses me, and I am an embedded systems engineer. I've seen this in the trade journals, and I don't get the marketing forces this is supposed to answer.
Consider this: my old laptop that I purchased in 1996 had 3 PCMCIA slots. This was good - I could have my NIC, my SCSI card (for tape backups), and my modem all in place at the same time.
However, any laptop of recent vintage will have at least USB2.0 High speed if not IEEE-1394 (FireWire), so this obviates the need for the SCSI card. It will have built-in Ethernet (at LEAST 10/100 MBits, if not 10/100/1000!), so there goes the Ethernet card. It will have a build in (Win)Modem, removing the need for the modem (at least for Windows users, and very likely for Linux users as well now-a-days).
So what is left for the PCMCIA slots? Flash readers? Built-in, or USB. Video capture? (like you need that in a laptop anyway, but....) Firewire. Video acceleration (MPEG decoding)? Faster CPU. 3D acceleration? Built in.
I can see using PCI-Express (the PROPER name for the new, high-speed serial interface) for the docking station interface - but even then, what do you really need to add to a laptop now?
So what is the point of a PCCARD style interface? OK, I may not be able to get a Firewire tape backup device (or maybe I can - I haven't looked since I don't need one), but if I want to back up a new laptop I can use the network or just dump everything to a Firewire drive.
Now, some may say "Yes, but what about embedded devices". And I can say, as a professional, "What about them?" Either what I am building is a small, simple device, where I would rather build in a USB 2.0 host adaptor, or it is a big, hairy multi-CPU monster that has what it needs built-in. Really, in neither situation would I want to go to the difficulty of adding a PCMCIA-style interface. Been there, done that, and had far too many headaches with people expecting to install J. Random Card and have it work. Sorry, but unless you are using Embedded Windows, you cannot just install the driver disk and go. And if you are using a Windows deriviative, you DON'T WANT users installing their own software (unless you really like watching Customer Service drown).
Again, unless we start seeing laptops with their video on a card, PCMCIA style interfaces are no longer the best engineering decision. Let them die.
www.eFax.com are spammers
If these people (or Brad) were thinking at all toward the future they would have made the cards BIGGER not smaller.
...).
My understanding is that the PCI-Express folks are working on a cartridge standard for "full size" cards (think PCI-card level functionality). This may come with the 2nd generation signaling rate (up from the 1st generation 2.5 Gb/s/lane).
The goal is to allow users to add/remove cards from desktops/servers without having to open them (or even without having to shut them down). This should make card manufacturers smile, I know quite a few people who don't upgrade their PCI cards simply because they are scared of opening them.
I expect the typical 2008 full-size desktop to have one or two cartridge slots and a few ExpressCard slots. The cartridge slots would be used for power/space-hungry applications (Video, multi-IO cards, optical connections, solid-state disks), while the card slots would be available for other extensions (smart card reader, UWB adapter cards, FW 1.6 adapters,
I've been looking for this sort of adapter for a while. Any ideas where I can pick one up?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I'd like to be able to upgrade the video processor, the CPU and the memory. Everything else I can upgrade through usb/firewire.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
If people could upgrade their video card (for example) by pulling a cartridge out of a slot and snapping in a new one, everyone wins!
I've suggested this before, and the replies have usually posed this question: How would a plastic shell dissipate the heat that modern 3D accelerators put out?
Poorly.
Will I retire or break 10K?
PCMCIA is based on ISA. ATA is also based on ISA, and CF is based on ATA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
And if you cannot tell the difference between the video from a $40 PCI capture card and the absolute shit you get from a $100 USB video port, you really, really, need glasses.
doesn't matter if the source is perfect or not - if the analog capture cannot be differentiated from the >i>digital source then you cannot magically "do better." Not with firewire, not with "lossless" and not with stupid, unfounded assertions in a discussion forum.
What "he" (meaning me) said was the analog capture could not be reliably differentiated from the digital source. Since this seems to have flown completely the fuck over your head the first two times I'll explain it in simpler terms:
Image(s)1: still images captured from the analog input (svideo) from a reasonably high end (but old) DVD player.
Image(s)2: stills (same ones) taken from a DVD rip of the movie. Since this will still probably go over your head I'll explain it further: you put the DVD in the computer's DVD drive, and "special software" reads the DVD movie as a file, with which you may then do as you please.
My bet would be he's viewing the Analog outpt through the same POS TV Tuner card
And you lose.
Ever heard of AVS forum? A whole community of high end snobs who were, for quite some time (many still are) basing entire home theaters - tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and time investment - and using lowly peecees as the central video processor. Peecees with $100 video capture cards. And, your ignorant assertions to the contrary, enjoying very high quality video.
You can spew ignorant bullshit all day if you like, but the fact remains thousands of people know you're dead fucking wrong. Think none of the people who read that also read /.? Well, here's one writing you this very second. With nearly three quarters of a million registered here, I very much doubt I'm alone. If you don't care that you look like a stupendously ignorant "know it all" in front of thousands of strangers, I certainly won't dwell on it any further.