text: what is a pcmcia adapter?   pcmcia :- personal computer memory card international association.  pc card from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (redirected from pcmcia) jump to: navigation, search pc cards are cards designed to be inserted into laptop computers in order to enable extra functions.  they were first called pcmcia cards as the original standards were set by the personal computer memory card international association. this awkward initialism was jokingly expanded as "people can't memorize computer industry acronyms" or "personal computer manufacturers can't invent acronyms". a later revision of the pc card is known as cardbus. the pcmcia is also developing a new notebook peripheral specification called newcard or expresscard.  the first pc cards (pcmcia, with the more logical ibm meaning: peripheral component microchannel interconnect architecture) were type i, and supported actual memory cards (e.g. ata type i flash memory cards), such as dram or flash memories. type ii cards added i/o support in addition to memory applications, and type iii expanded on this. the interface's role as i/o for various devices has largely superseded its role as a memory card, but this role did spawn a generation of flash memory cards that set out to improve on the size and features of ata type i cards (compactflash, minicard, and ssfdc(smartmedia)).    type ii and iii pc cards. the type iii is twice the thickness of the type ii.contents [hide] 1 pc card  2 cardbus  3 expresscard (newcard)  4 external links  5 see also      [edit] pc card a pc card is about the size of a credit card. there are three different sizes, varying in thickness: type i is 3.3 mm thick, type ii is 5.0 mm thick and type iii is 10.5 mm thick. all are 85.6 mm long and 54.0 mm wide. most notebooks used to come with two type ii slots or one type iii. with the removal of legacy ports, most notebooks now only come with one type ii card slot. fortunately, most type iii cards were normally external hard disks that have since been replaced with usb, firewire and now serial ata solutions, along with flash memory options. memory cards such as ata type i flash memory cards continue to be available for the pc card type i.  as the original name suggests, the first pc cards were for memory expansion. however, the existence of a usable general standard for notebook peripherals led to all manner of devices being made available in this form. typical devices include network cards, modems and hard disks.  the electrical specification for the pc card is also used for compactflash, so a pc card compactflash adapter need only be a socket adapter.  the form factor is also used by the common interface form of conditional access modules for dvb broadcasts.  [edit] cardbus the original pc card bus was 16-bit, similar to isa. cardbus is effectively a 32-bit, 33 mhz pci bus, in the same physical form as the earlier cards. the notch on the left hand front of the card is slightly shallower on a cardbus card so a 32-bit card cannot be plugged into a slot that can only accept 16-bit cards. most new slots are compatible with both cardbus and the original 16-bit pc card devices.  cardbus includes the bus mastering ability, which allows a controller on the bus to talk to other devices or memory without going through the cpu. many chipsets are available for both pci and cardbus cards, such as those that support wi-fi.  [edit] expresscard (newcard)   expresscards compared to the predecessor pccard.the pcmcia has developed a replacement for the present cardbus standard, called expresscard (originally codenamed newcard), which is claimed to be faster and less complex than cardbus. the host device supports both pci express and usb 2.0 connectivity through the expresscard slot, and each card uses whichever the designer feels most appropriate to the task. the cards are hot-pluggable.  expresscard supports two form factors, expresscard/34 (34 mm wide) and expre