Thinkpads Forum

Aside from a wireless card, what use is that bay?

All I can think of is firewire... it seems pretty useless for ibm to put 2 pcmcia slots. They should replace the parallel port in the back with either firewire or more usb slots! And turn the space taken up by the PCMCIA with another hard drive w/RAID!

Opinions?

jonnnny wrote:Aside from a wireless card, what use is that bay?

All I can think of is firewire... it seems pretty useless for ibm to put 2 pcmcia slots. They should replace the parallel port in the back with either firewire or more usb slots! And turn the space taken up by the PCMCIA with another hard drive w/RAID!

Opinions?

that's simple, GPRS/EDGE card or another system like CDMA or card readers

I have one of my slots filled with a Sony Ericsson GC83 EDGE cell technology, radio modem. I use it to connect to the internet from most anywhere I get cell service.

A lot of ports seems to be useless until you find a device you must use and requiring that port

General questions should go in the general forum

True, I agree..but also the T42 section gets more replies than the general section!

I also use the PCMCIA slot for Sony-Ericsson wireless. ... JD Hurst

Are you serious? I'm the one that was disappointed to give up one of my CardBus slots for this new "ExpressCard" -- a card slot with exactly zero products available for it.

For the PCMCIA/CardBus slot, I juggle:
- CompactFlash card reader, Delkin 32 CardBus -- very fast
- Firewire adapter
- RS-232 SocketIO card (for data logger devices)
- MMC card reader
- Symbol spectrum analyzer card
- WiFi card with external antenna for increased range
- IBM Smart Card reader
- Verizon EvDO CDMA card (sweet)

Some of these could be done by USB, of course, but the PCMCIA cards don't hang out of the machine like a USB dongle, so I can leave the card in place. CardBus is also significantly faster for most things.

In the case of RS-232, good ol' 16-bit PCMCIA is the only way to get a COM port with all the control signals old programs need -- USB adapters only sorta work because the UART is emulated.

Most usually, my flash card reader, but also a USB card for four more USB ports, which sometimes comes in handy. Also, once a wifi card when my internal one died.

I use a USR/3Com/Megahertz Xjack 56k hardware modem. It works much better than the Intel/Agere MiniPCI Combo card winmodem.

Also an Adaptec SCSI PC Card for backing up to an external tape drive or use with a SCSI scanner.

Plus a Portable Drive Bay 2000 - 2 CDs or DVDs - copy on the fly, 2 floppies or floppy and a CD drive combo and so on.

Compact Flash Card adapter.

Backup wireless or wired network card.

USB 2.0 and/or Firewire adapter.

External PC Card for CD/DVD player.

Cellular modem.

Richochet - choke -

IIRC, there exists an adapter to fit a 2.5" HD into a PCMCIA III slot, aka 2x PCMCIA I/II slots together. Did I imagine it or do these things exist?

It was one of the reasons why I bought a lappy with 2 PCMCIA slots, only to go out and buy a USB enclosure for an extra HD...

it seems GSM device is the most common when someone has something in PCMCIA, I have there Option Globetrotter

dont forget the soundblaster audigy 2, which has a pcmcia version

Onyx wrote:IIRC, there exists an adapter to fit a 2.5" HD into a PCMCIA III slot, aka 2x PCMCIA I/II slots together. Did I imagine it or do these things exist?

It was one of the reasons why I bought a lappy with 2 PCMCIA slots, only to go out and buy a USB enclosure for an extra HD...

I've seen some small HDDs designed to fit in a PCMCIA Slot but I was under the impression that they were something like 1.8" and only took up one slot.

There's also the IBM nee Hitachi Micro Drive. They started at 300MB and are up to 1G.

verktyg wrote:I've seen some small HDDs designed to fit in a PCMCIA Slot but I was under the impression that they were something like 1.8" and only took up one slot.

There's also the IBM nee Hitachi Micro Drive. They started at 300MB and are up to 1G.

yes, they're great and fantastic little Toshiba's

http://www.toshiba-europe.com/storage/I ... =MK2004GAL

I have one of the Toshi PCMCIA drives. They're pretty fragile and not big enough to be useful for anything. CompactFlash has eaten their lunch.

Ground Loop wrote:I have one of the Toshi PCMCIA drives. They're pretty fragile and not big enough to be useful for anything. CompactFlash has eaten their lunch.

They come with 20,30,40 and 60 Gigs, I think that's enough. The biggest Compact Flash I've seen has 8 Gigs and its price is more then 7x higher !

So under the manifest weight of evidence Compat Flash does not eat their lunch.

Instead of putting USB there, you can have a 4 port USB PCMCIA card.
Hahaha

Navck wrote:Instead of putting USB there, you can have a 4 port USB PCMCIA card.
Hahaha

I did not catch a sense of your notice ...

Without the beloved PCMCIA Cardbus slot I couldn't use my Adaptec 1480 SCSI card for my older legacy devices, scanner, scsi HD, old plextor cdr etc.

PC Card slots are pretty useful on a T4x, which comes with a minimum of ports and stuff integrated. If you want firewire, more USB2 ports, card readers, etc, the slots come in very handy.

My only gripe is that the door that covers the slots keeps getting knocked out of my T4x. To make things worse I lost the spring that makes the door spring back to the closed position