USB 2 PCMCIA Adaptor???
Patrick D. Rockwell
to back up that laptop and it
plugged into the PCMCIA slot of my old laptop.
Recently, I got a new laptop and I found out that PCMCIA slots are old
technology, so my question is
this. Since my new laptop has 4 USB plugs, is there an adaptor into
which I can plug my PCMCIA
external hard drive, and then plug that adaptor into my old laptop?
I still have my old laptop, and I did use a USB external hard drive to
retrieve files from it for my new
computer, but I'd still like to be able to make use of my PCMCIA
external hard drive on my new system
if that's possible.
Martin Slaney
> My old laptop has a PCMCIA slot. I used an external hard drive by CMS
> to back up that laptop and it
> plugged into the PCMCIA slot of my old laptop.
>
> Recently, I got a new laptop and I found out that PCMCIA slots are old
> technology, so my question is
> this. Since my new laptop has 4 USB plugs, is there an adaptor into
> which I can plug my PCMCIA
> external hard drive, and then plug that adaptor into my old laptop?
Very much doubt it. If there was such a thing it would almost certainly
cost more than a USB enclosure to re-house the HD from your PCMCIA
enclosure.
BillW50
Hi Patrick! Why do you call PCMCIA as old technology? As it is still
widely supported. I have three PCMCIA hard drives myself. Although they
are twice as high as a standard PCMCIA card and takes up two slots. My
Gateway MX6124 has a PCMCIA slot, but they won't fit in single slot
PCMCIA. They still work in my old Toshiba 2595XDVD though.
I don't know what your PCMCIA looks like. But I seriously doubt that I
could pull mine out of the PCMCIA card and use them with an USB adapter.
As they are much smaller than 2 1/2 inch hard drives. And even if it
does have a plug, you probably couldn't find an USB adaptor for them anyway.
What size is yours? Mine are 512MB and flash drives are much better than
my old hard drives anyway. And I consider them too small for modern use
anyway and it isn't a big deal for me to just put them in my spare parts
box. So I don't know, you might want to think about it as well.
--
Bill
Black Asus EEE PC 4GB 2GB SODIMM Adata 16GB
Windows XP SP2 and Xandros Linux
Barry Watzman
There is no USB to PC Card adapter that I am aware of (e.g. plugs into a
USB port and gives you a PC Card slot).
If your PC Card slots are "cardbus" (e.g. 32-bit capable, as opposed to
16-bit only capable), then you could get a USB port PC Card for the old
laptop. This could be either USB 1.x or USB 2.
Best solution here (assuming that we are talking about a 2.5" drive):
Buy a USB external hard drive case (less than $10, perhaps less than
$5), remove the hard drive itself from the PC Card external drive case
and put it into the new USB external drive case that you just bought.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
BillW50
> What you call "PCMCIA" should more correctly be called "PC Card"...
Don't be so paranoid Barry! I don't see any PCMCIA Police around. Do
you? ;-)
--
Bill
Black Asus EEE PC 4GB 2GB SoDIMM Adata 16GB
Patrick D. Rockwell
> Martin Slaney wrote on ri, 05 Sep 2008 06:29:40 +0100:
>
> > Patrick D. Rockwell wrote:
> >> My old laptop has a PCMCIA slot. I used an external hard drive by CMS
> >> to back up that laptop and it
> >> plugged into the PCMCIA slot of my old laptop.
>
> >> Recently, I got a new laptop and I found out that PCMCIA slots are old
> >> technology, so my question is
> >> this. Since my new laptop has 4 USB plugs, is there an adaptor into
> >> which I can plug my PCMCIA
> >> external hard drive, and then plug that adaptor into my old laptop?
>
> > Very much doubt it. If there was such a thing it would almost certainly
> > cost more than a USB enclosure to re-house the HD from your PCMCIA
> > enclosure.
>
> Hi Patrick! Why do you call PCMCIA as old technology? As it is still
> widely supported. I have three PCMCIA hard drives myself. Although they
> are twice as high as a standard PCMCIA card and takes up two slots. My
> Gateway MX6124 has a PCMCIA slot, but they won't fit in single slot
> PCMCIA. They still work in my old Toshiba 2595XDVD though.
>
Hi Bill! The reason that I said that is because Apparently Dell
doesn't make
computers with the PCMCIA slot anymore, and CMS doesn't make external
hard drives which plug into the PCMCIA slot anymore. They were the
ones who
told me that it was old technology.
> I don't know what your PCMCIA looks like. But I seriously doubt that I
> could pull mine out of the PCMCIA card and use them with an USB adapter.
> As they are much smaller than 2 1/2 inch hard drives. And even if it
> does have a plug, you probably couldn't find an USB adaptor for them anyway.
>
> What size is yours? Mine are 512MB and flash drives are much better than
My PCMCIA hard drive is 20 Gigs in size.
> my old hard drives anyway. And I consider them too small for modern use
> anyway and it isn't a big deal for me to just put them in my spare parts
> box. So I don't know, you might want to think about it as well.
>
> --
> Bill
> Black Asus EEE PC 4GB 2GB SODIMM Adata 16GB
> Windows XP SP2 and Xandros Linux
Thanks for your reply.
Barry Watzman
***I AM THE PCMCIA Police !!!****
[And I have a warrant for your arrest .....]
:-)
BillW50 wrote:
> Barry Watzman wrote on Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:36:20 -0400:
>> What you call "PCMCIA" should more correctly be called "PC Card"...
>
> Don't be so paranoid Barry! I don't see any PCMCIA Police around. Do
> you? ;-)
>
BillW50
> Hi Bill! The reason that I said that is because Apparently Dell
> doesn't make
> computers with the PCMCIA slot anymore, and CMS doesn't make external
> hard drives which plug into the PCMCIA slot anymore. They were the
> ones who
> told me that it was old technology.
Yeah they are trying to make manufactures abandoned the PCMCIA in favor
of the ExpressCard. Luckily not all are falling for it though.
> My PCMCIA hard drive is 20 Gigs in size.
Oh wow! That is huge compared too my three 512MB PCMCIA hard drives. I
would guess yours doesn't actually fit in the PCMCIA slot completely,
eh? Part of yours must hang outside with the hard drive, right? My
PCMCIA hard drives isn't very useful to me anymore since I have 16GB SD
cards and a number of 320GB USB hard drives.
--
Bill
Black Asus EEE PC 4GB 2GB SoDIMM Adata 16GB
Mike Y
"Barry Watzman" <Watzma...@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
news:5b12e$48c2956b$12...@news.teranews.com...
> What you call "PCMCIA" should more correctly be called "PC Card".
Actually no. Well, maybe. When people refer to PCMCIA they generally are
refering to the 16bit slot that is a 'hot swapable' implementation of the
PC-AT
ISA bus, but at a faster speed. When refering to PCCard it generally means
CardBus, and now seems to refer to the catchall of anything that will fit in
that
original PCMCIA slot. Cardbus / PCCard is essentially a 'hot swapable'
implementation of PCI. In fact, your 'CardBus' controller that interfaces
to
the socket appears on the PCI as just another generic bridge device. PCI
is 32 bit.
You can USUALLY plug in PCMCIA cards into PCCard slots, but you
CANNOT plug a PCCard into PCMCIA.
> There is no USB to PC Card adapter that I am aware of (e.g. plugs into a
> USB port and gives you a PC Card slot).
Actually, that would be a pretty simple hardware implementation for PCMCIA,
but it would never generate enough sales to be viable. Maybe in the
timeframe
when USB was 'brand new' and PCMCIA was just falling off. But even
then the appeal would be for CardBus cards, and that's not really viable.
It could be done, but again, the market would not support it, especially at
what would be sure to be a huge performance hit. Manufacturers would
bring out new USB devices, not support old devices.
> If your PC Card slots are "cardbus" (e.g. 32-bit capable, as opposed to
> 16-bit only capable), then you could get a USB port PC Card for the old
> laptop. This could be either USB 1.x or USB 2.
>
> Best solution here (assuming that we are talking about a 2.5" drive):
> Buy a USB external hard drive case (less than $10, perhaps less than
> $5), remove the hard drive itself from the PC Card external drive case
> and put it into the new USB external drive case that you just bought.
Sabrent sells a little aluminum case for 2.5" drives with a USB interface.
I picked up a couple for about $7 each from SurplusComputers.com
about a year ago. There's also a bare Sabrent cable that interfaces to
just about any drive, even SATA, for under $20. You get a USB cable
with a tripple head. Small ATA, fullsize ATA, and SATA, all on the head
of the cable. Plus a power supply for the bigger drives.
If you have drives that were native to PCMCIA, there used to be available
small adapters that you could plug on the drive and now it was a generic
ATA drive, and that you could plug into the Sabrent. That would work with
most PCMCIA ATA drives but not all. There was a little SyQuest drive
that was 'different', as well as the 'ATA equivilent' drives, like the Nikon
CoolPix, that was different enough that Apple couldn't figure out how to
support it on their laptops.
There's even been adapters for CF to standard ATA, but I haven't seen
them for long time. Most of that stuff is of such limited market it's not
worth
it to manufacture.