[aprssig] Dual Serial Port PCMCIA card; $50

[J. Lance Cotton]

Chris Rose wrote:
> I have installed PC cards that plug into the back or
> side of a mother board.  I use PCMCIA cards that plug
> in the side of my laptops.  I don't see this ad
> showing me a card that plugs into the motherboard as a
> "PC" card does.  It looks like a PCMCIA card that
> plugs into the card slot in my laptop.  Maybe I need
> to get more education on what these "cards" are and
> what they do.  

PCI cards go in the back of motherboards, replacing the old "ISA" 
interface style.

PCMCIA cards are what you think they are. At one point the standards 
body decided that when they updated the standard for PCMCIA from 16bit 
addressing to 32 bit, they would give the standard a new name that was 
easier for consumers to pronounce. They picked "PC Card". Of course, 
hardly anyone picked up on this, so PCMCIA stuck. The official 
non-consumer name for the 32 bit bus that uses the same physical 
connector as PCMCIA is called "CardBus". But most folks call all of it 
"PCMCIA", even though it's a fairly different interface, protocol-wise.

Not that it matters except that older laptops may not be able to use 
this dual serial port card.

-- 
J. Lance Cotton, KJ5O
joe at lightningflash.net
http://map.findu.com/kj5o-12
Three Step Plan: 1. Take over the world. 2. Get a lot of cookies. 3. Eat 
the cookies.