Is Pcmcia Dead?

PCMCIA was an important port on laptops for years, actually decades--beginning with the 16-bit PCMCIA cards. with the advent of XP going to 32-bit cardbus (same size), and more recently to the smaller Express card 34 and 54.

But the latter didn't seem to last long. When I look at notebooks in stores now, there usually is no Express Card slot, nor any other kind of PCMCIA slot.

Is PCMCIA dead and extinct now? If so, why? What happened to it?

I use professional music software, for which the built-in sound cards in notebooks are not sufficient. Therefore, I have used the Echo Indigo PCMCIA soundcard for years--first in the cardbus version, and more recently the Express Card version. (Back before 32 bit cardbus, I used 16 bit MIDI PCMCIA cards--Roland SCP-55, and the Emu one.)

Unfortunate to think that next time I buy a notebook, I won't be able to find one with PCMCIA. Or, do some manufacturers still include it?

 

The PCMCIA manufacturers association, which promoted PCMCIA has dissolved since 2009.
ExpressCard Pressroom


I'm not sure if this means there will be no laptops with PCMCIA slots, but I think it is highly unlikely that you will find any.

You might be able to find a USB or Expresscard to PCMCIA adapter somewhere though.

 

Interesting article. They came out with a new Expresscard standard in June 2009, but then saw the writing on the wall, and closed up shop.

Unfortunate, because PCMCIA was a good format for laptop periperhals--much faster than USB 2.0. (I don't know why USB 3.0 is taking so long to become commonplace.)

How about Firewire ports? Do most laptops still have those, or have they been phased out as well?

 

Some laptops still do have FireWire, although many have gotten rid of the port given its decreasing use. The Thinkpad T520 (and T420, but less sure about that), for example, still has a FireWire port.

PCMCIA, though, has gone its course, though. Even the Thinkpads, famous for supporting legacy standards longer than most other laptops, have phased it out.

 

I believe the key advantage of PCMCIA/CardBus/ExpressCard over USB is latency as PCMCIA etc. is just the addon card equivalent of a PC where you are not at the mercy of someone else(say on the USB). The new Lightpeak(?) would hopefully replace all these.

 

FireWire is still going strong, especially when music professionals still insist on using it. PCMCIA is still around of select business notebooks but they are dying too to ExpressCard.

 

Firewire is very solid. It isn't a raw PCI interface like Expresscard or PCMCIA, however it IS its own raw data interface. This means there is no compression that happens depending on your chipset, southbridge or whatever is controlling USB at the time.
It also supports 800mb/s.

The reason I miss the old card interfaces is because they would work like direct PCI or PCI-E, so you could do special things E. G. wiring up desktop components. But now mini PCI-E seems to work for a lot of this.

 

Damn. I still have a brand new in box Buffalo PCMCIA high power wireless-G adapter. I got it years ago... because I thought it was cool. It had extra juice, plus had an external antenna connector. Alas, it has collected dust for years. Maybe I'll toss it up in the for sale section here?

maiki, have you looked into USB pro audio solutions?

M-AUDIO - Fast Track Pro - 4 x 4 Mobile USB Audio/MIDI Interface with Preamps

I dare say USB will stick around a bit longer. Sure, this isn't internal, but your PCMCIA card probably had to use a breakout box of some kind anyways.

 

You can still find PCMCIA slots on some laptops like Dell's Latitude E5520. I wouldn't count on them being around next year in any laptops.

 

In fact the Dell Latitude E55x0 Series are the still remaining laptops I still know that also carry the ancient Serial Port! So yeah the E55x0 are one of the last laptop series that is still clutching on legacy ports.

 

With chipsets newer than ICH8 you can use USB 2.0 audio devices for most tasks. Unless you need MADI, but then you are likely using a more expensive laptop, too, which should still come with ExpressCard.

Intel put its energy into Light Peak/Thunderbolt, which effectively is the same as ExpressCard, just in a more convenient, but also more expensive cable form.

Personally I use ExpressCard for eSATA and made Apple exchange my Macbook Pros over the course of 2 years repeatedly until it was at least usable without data corruption. Still I must not touch the MBP with external grounding while transferring data to keep the EC port from dropping out.

Once USB 3 and Thunderbolt are widely spread both FW and ExpressCard will only be offered as external adapters to keep "legacy" hardware going.