[ale] Ask Mr. RetroScience: PCMCIA I?/II?/III?

[johnmills at speakeasy.net (John Mills)]

Ray -

Thanks. You've given my answer.

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Raylynn Knight wrote:

> On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 22:52, John Mills wrote:
> > Gurus and Guresses -
> > 
> > I came home with a D-Link model DWL-650, 802.11b PC Card Adapter (i.e,
> > wireless NIC) for a "PC Card Type II" slot in a ">= 300MHz Pentium" laptop
> > [it says on the box].

> Is it a CardBus (i.e 32 bit card) or a PCMCIA (ie. 16 bit card).  That
> may be more relevant.

The box also says, "High-Performance 16-bit PC Card".

> Most likely your Toshiba has PCMCIA (16 bit) slots not CardBus.  In
> which case you don't want to try to force the card into the slot.

That something else I didn't know: "CardBus" not being physically
interchangeable with PCMCIA. I've been wondering whether all those terms
were 'marketingspeak' or reflected actual differences. My 'Google' shot
didn't get me a clear answer - not one I recoginized, anyway.

Sounds like I have pretty good hopes the end-of-life card will run in my 
back-from-death Toshiba.

Regards.

 - John Mills
   john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu