[oneeyedhobbit]

Alright--to make a long story short, I'm looking to get an iPod, and it looks like for the price of a 4Gen + the extra firewire cable I may as well just get the 5G and a PCMCIA USB 2.0 card. This is predicated on my laptop having a PCMCIA card--its got a cardbus card, and while a combination of Google and Wikipedia lead me to believe it will be alright (as wiki tells me cardbus is effectively PCMCIA 2.1).

So, once I sort that mess out: assuming that there is no extremely compelling reason to go 4G (I already know about the iMod), I'll be doign the 5G/card plan. I was looking on New Egg, and really all I want is the CHEAPEST card I can get--but my caveat being that it must be dependable. Too many of the cheap brands on New Egg caused freeze up errors and such. So, any advice on what constitutes a good PCMCIA card, or what brands are pretty dependable but budget-minded? I don't predict ever using this for anything besides the iPod,s o please don't tell me about the "733t haxxorz omg111!!" PCMCIA card that features nothing but marketing good enough to dupe too many people.

 

[lini]

Well, first of all: Don't get confused. It got all a bit complicated, since the PCMCIA cards have been renamed to PC Cards (with PCMCIA remaining the name for the organisation). Generally those PCMCIA/PC Cards come in three flavours: (old) 5 V 16 bit cards, (newer) 3 V 16 Bit cards and CardBus cards - with the 16 Bit PCMCIA/PC Card bus being very similar to good old ISA, while the CardBus is a derivate of the PCI bus system with the same theoretical maximum data throughput of 133 MByte/s. So what you'd need (unless your notebook is very vintage (or very recent - then it might rather need an ExpressCard, the mobile derivate of PCI Express)) - and the only thing that makes sense for USB 2.0 because of the transfer rate - is a CardBus PC Card, with the maximum size probably being Type II.

As for choosing the right cheap card for you: The ones with the usual chips from NEC or VIA should all work well enough for your purpose. As for the user comments, I'd recommend to check these out carefully: Some might indeed be helpful to assess the quality, others might be misleading. I'd especially recommend to be careful with comments about power/heat/stability related issues with the more power-hungry among the bus-powered USB devices (e.g. quite a few 2.5" hdds), which will often enough require the use of a powered hub or some external power supply to the USB (e.g. connector for a 5 V dc power supply on the USB PC Card), 'cause the PC Card slot isn't designed to provide that much power...

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

P.S.: If your still confused about PCMCIA/PC Card/CardBus et cetera, you should find a lot more in-depth info on www.pcmcia.org. (...) Yup, just checked - their site is still active and up to date, and you might want to check their faq (http://www.pcmcia.org/faq.htm) and maybe also this page: http://www.pcmcia.org/pccard.htm

 

[oneeyedhobbit]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lini Well, first of all: Don't get confused. It got all a bit complicated, since the PCMCIA cards have been renamed to PC Cards (with PCMCIA remaining the name for the organisation). Generally those PCMCIA/PC Cards come in three flavours: (old) 5 V 16 bit cards, (newer) 3 V 16 Bit cards and CardBus cards - with the 16 Bit PCMCIA/PC Card bus being very similar to good old ISA, while the CardBus is a derivate of the PCI bus system with the same theoretical maximum data throughput of 133 MByte/s. So what you'd need (unless your notebook is very vintage (or very recent - then it might rather need an ExpressCard, the mobile derivate of PCI Express)) - and the only thing that makes sense for USB 2.0 because of the transfer rate - is a CardBus PC Card, with the maximum size probably being Type II. As for choosing the right cheap card for you: The ones with the usual chips from NEC or VIA should all work well enough for your purpose. As for the user comments, I'd recommend to check these out carefully: Some might indeed be helpful to assess the quality, others might be misleading. I'd especially recommend to be careful with comments about power/heat/stability related issues with the more power-hungry among the bus-powered USB devices (e.g. quite a few 2.5" hdds), which will often enough require the use of a powered hub or some external power supply to the USB (e.g. connector for a 5 V dc power supply on the USB PC Card), 'cause the PC Card slot isn't designed to provide that much power... Greetings from Hannover! Manfred / lini P.S.: If your still confused about PCMCIA/PC Card/CardBus et cetera, you should find a lot more in-depth info on www.pcmcia.org. (...) Yup, just checked - their site is still active and up to date, and you might want to check their faq (http://www.pcmcia.org/faq.htm) and maybe also this page: http://www.pcmcia.org/pccard.htm

Thanks much for the helpful/informative post! If I understood that correctly, I should look for a CardBus Type I or II card? I saw that many of them had an external power supply. Is that something thats strongly recommended? I'll mostly (if not entirely) be using it to charge/transfer songs to and fro an iPod.

Edit: I assume it needs to be one of the "powered" cards to actually charge the iPod.