PCMCIA cards and cardbus?

[ArchStudent]

Howdy all,

I was wondering if someone could water things down a bit for me. Is there a physical difference in dimensions for 16-bit pcmcia cads and 32-bit pcmcia cards (pins layouts slightly different size)?

What is cardbus? How does one tell if one has cardbus? Why will some pcmcia cards not fit into certain pcmcia slots(excluding pcmcia type III)?

I've got two laptops, one is a pentium III and the other is a Pentium I w/ MMX. Now both machines have two PCMCIA slots, but whenever I try to install a wifi pcmcia card into the older model is just will not slide in all the way, it goes in about 3/4 of the way and is firmly stopped. Now there is no problem in the newer PIII laptop, so I am left trying to figure out what is wrong?

The Pentium I works great with a 3com 10/100 nic / 56k v.90 modem pcmcia card...

any ideas as to why I can not get the wifi card to slide in?

 

[Peter]

The cards are physically the same size, and use the same connector - only keyed so that 32-bit "CardBus" cards don't fit into 16-bit-only machines. That's probably what you observe on the old box. Legacy 16-bit cards do fit into CardBus slots.

Technically, 16-bit PCMCIA cards are technically ISA devices with some hotplug logic and PnP information in front of them. 32-bit CardBus cards are technically PCI devices. In both cases, the slot controller first acts as a hotplug dock and then, when the card has been enabled, as a bus bridge.

How to tell? Well, in Windows, Device Manager listing a CardBus bridge device (one per slot) would be a good hint.

 

[ArchStudent]

does such a thing as 16bit wifi pcmcia cards exist?

 

[ArchStudent]

I found one, so I guess I now know the answer to that ;D