Technical information

LS PRO OWNER'S HANDBOOK 7/1
Using PCMCIA Cards
Chapter 7
7 USING PCMCIA CARDS
PCMCIA Cards or PC Cards are expansion devices for
notebook and compact desktop computers. The primary
benefits of PC Cards are their low power consumption, small
size, ease of installation and ruggedness.
A wide variety of PC Cards are already available including LAN
adapters, fax/modems, various memory cards, and ATA-
standard hard disk drives. New cards are coming onto the
market all the time.
What is PCMCIA?
The standards for PC Cards are defined by the Personal Computer
Memory Card International Association. The abbreviation
“PCMCIA” is variously used to refer to the expansion interface,
the individual cards, or the whole technology.
The PCMCIA standards define three physical sizes of cards: Type␣ I,
Type␣ II and Type␣ III. All three card types are roughly the size of a
standard credit card, and use the same 68-pin edge connector.
They differ only in thickness: the thicknesses for Type␣ I, Type␣ II
and Type␣ III are 3.3 mm, 5.0 mm and 10.5 mm respectively.
The computer has a PCMCIA module with two slots or sockets
that can accommodate the following card types:
Slot Type of card
Slot 1 (upper) Type I, Type II or Type III
Slot 2 (lower) Type I or Type II
The PCMCIA standards also define the software needed to
control the PCMCIA interface and configure PC Cards. This
software is known as “Card␣ &␣ Socket Services” and supports
the ability of PCMCIA-aware operating systems, applications
and device drivers (also called clients) to share PC Cards, sockets
and system resources.