PCMCIA Protocol

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In the early 90's, the rapid growth of mobile computing drove the development of smaller, lighter, and more portable tools for information processing. One of the most exciting of these innovations was PC Card technology. The power and versatility of PC Cards quickly made them standard equipment in mobile computers.

The PC Card Standard provides physical specifications for three types of PC Cards, with additional provisions for extended cards. All three card types measure the same length and width and use the same 68-pin connector. The only difference between the card types is thickness. The thicknesses are 3.3, 5.0, and 10.5 millimeters for Type I, Type II, and Type III cards respectively. Because they differ only in thickness, a thinner card can be used in a thicker slot, but a thicker card can not be used in a thinner slot.

This bus uses a 64 pin interface. These cards use an 8- or 16-bit interface that operates at ISA bus speeds (8 MHz) using an ISA-like asynchronous protocol. Throughput ranges up to 20MB/sec.

To learn more about PCMCIA, visit the following websites:

  www.pcmcia.org

  www.pc-card.org