on 10/08/03 11:53 AM, Clark Martin at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> Until I got this thing last week I didn't even know
>> what a PCMCIA card was !
>
>
> First off unless this 3400 has been upgraded it probably cannot use a
> CardBus PC Card (PCMCIA is the old term for PC Card). I say probably
> as there apparently some 3400s shipped with CardBus card cages.
> CardBus is the new and improved PC Card. It can transfer data at a
> higher rate. Most 10/100 Ethernet cards are CardBus (MacAlly's
> isn't). All available USB cards are CardBus (there is a rumor of an
> early model that wasn't). All FireWire and 802.11g cards are.
As I'm sure others will quickly point out, the 3400's motherboard is CardBus
capable. The cards themselves are essentially a keyed connector at the end,
i.e., they have a special shape. The card cage in the 3400 is keyed for the
older PCMCIA standard. I'll attempt to do an ASCII drawing of the
difference... If you look at the end of your PCcard that has the connector,
you'll see one of the skinny sides of the connector looks like one of the
illustrations. {If I've reversed these, I'm sure someone will gently
correct me.}
PCMCIA
****
****
****
****
******
******
CardBus
****
****
******
******
******
******
In other words, a PCMCIA PCcard can fit any slot, but the CardBus card will
only fit in the newer slot. I've not examined the card cage to see if
there's simply a piece of metal that can be bent out of the way. The cheap
fix involves an XActo knife. The expensive fix is to send your 3400 to MCE
along with $99 for a replacement card cage. The only other difference with
MCE's fix is that they also have a metal EM barrier between the slots to
prevent EM interference between cards. I'm not sure, though, just how
necessary this is, as there are a number of folk using 'pruned' CardBus
cards w/o incident.
I personally use a CardBus USB card that I've not even trimmed down. It was
a tight fit the first few times, but now it works pretty well.
As always, google around a bit and then perhaps take the plunge with some
fairly cheap card to test the waters.
- Eric.
--
Eric Strobel ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
=====================================================================
What if the 'Hokey-Pokey' really IS what it's all about??
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