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59-403: The MobilePro 200 was the first system released under MobilePro brand in 1997. It featured a non-backlit 480 x 240 four-colour grayscale display and a type II PC Card slot. It had 2 MB of RAM and a NEC VR4101 MIPS microprocessor and ran Windows CE 1.0. It could be synced to a PC via a docking cradle or could communicate with other handheld PCs via an infrared port . The unit is powered by

118-521: A de facto standard was Altair with the Altair 8800 , developed 1974–1975, which later became a multi-manufacturer standard, the S-100 bus . Many of these computers were also passive backplane designs, where all elements of the computer, (processor, memory, and I/O) plugged into a card cage which passively distributed signals and power between the cards. Proprietary bus implementations for systems such as

177-484: A navigation system still included a PC Card reader integrated into the audio system . Some Japanese brand consumer entertainment devices such as TV sets include a PC Card slot for playback of media. Adapters for PC Cards to Personal Computer ISA slots were available when these technologies were current. Cardbus adapters for PCI slots have been made. These adapters were sometimes used to fit Wireless (802.11) PCMCIA cards into desktop computers with PCI slots. Before

236-443: A riser card in part because they project upward from the board and allow expansion cards to be placed above and parallel to the motherboard. Expansion cards allow the capabilities and interfaces of a computer system to be extended or supplemented in a way appropriate to the tasks it will perform. For example, a high-speed multi-channel data acquisition system would be of no use in a personal computer used for bookkeeping, but might be

295-411: A single serial RS232 port or Ethernet port. An expansion card can be installed to offer multiple RS232 ports or multiple and higher bandwidth Ethernet ports. In this case, the motherboard provides basic functionality but the expansion card offers additional or enhanced ports. One edge of the expansion card holds the contacts (the edge connector or pin header ) that fit into the slot. They establish

354-497: A 168 MHz NEC VR4121 processor. The MobilePro 880 was released in 2000. It had specifications similar to the 780 but had a larger 9 inch 800 x 600 display and a USB port. The 790's ROM can be put in an 880 which upgrades the OS to CE 3 but disables the USB port. The MobilePro 790 was released in 2001. It is an upgrade of the 780 that runs Windows for Handheld PC 2000. The MobilePro P300

413-429: A 32-bit device cannot be plugged into earlier equipment supporting only 16-bit devices. Most new slots accept both CardBus and the original 16-bit PC Card devices. CardBus cards can be distinguished from older cards by the presence of a gold band with eight small studs on the top of the card next to the pin sockets. The speed of CardBus interfaces in 32-bit burst mode depends on the transfer type: in byte mode, transfer

472-480: A Cardbus card to an Expresscard slot, or vice versa, and carry out the required electrical interfacing. These adapters do not handle older non-Cardbus PCMCIA cards. PC Card devices can be plugged into an ExpressCard adaptor, which provides a PCI-to-PCIe Bridge. Despite being much faster in speed/bandwidth, ExpressCard was not as popular as PC Card, due in part to the ubiquity of USB ports on modern computers. Most functionality provided by PC Card or ExpressCard devices

531-523: A PCI Bus. Generally speaking, most PCI expansion cards will function on any CPU platform which incorporates PCI bus hardware provided there is a software driver for that type. PCI video cards and any other cards that contain their own BIOS or other ROM are problematic, although video cards conforming to VESA Standards may be used for secondary monitors. DEC Alpha, IBM PowerPC, and NEC MIPS workstations used PCI bus connectors. Both Zorro II and NuBus were plug and play , requiring no hardware configuration by

590-412: A discrete GPU. Most other computer lines, including those from Apple Inc. , Tandy , Commodore , Amiga , and Atari, Inc. , offered their own expansion buses. The Amiga used Zorro II . Apple used a proprietary system with seven 50-pin-slots for Apple II peripheral cards , then later used both variations on Processor Direct Slot and NuBus for its Macintosh series until 1995, when they switched to

649-429: A key part of a system used for industrial process control. Expansion cards can often be installed or removed in the field, allowing a degree of user customization for particular purposes. Some expansion cards take the form of "daughterboards" that plug into connectors on a supporting system board. In personal computing , notable expansion buses and expansion card standards include the S-100 bus from 1974 associated with

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708-440: A pair of AA batteries . The MobilePro 200 also has numerous organizer software features as well as numerous entertainment software (Solitaire) This unit is touchscreen and does not require the use of a mouse. The MobilePro 400 was released in 1997. It had 4 MB of RAM and a NEC VR4101 MIPS processor. It came with Windows CE 1.0 but could be upgraded to Windows CE 2.0. The MobilePro 400 has Pocket Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Like

767-543: A passive adapter can be made to connect XT cards to a PLUS expansion connector. Another feature of PLUS cards is that they are stackable. Another bus that offered stackable expansion modules was the "sidecar" bus used by the IBM PCjr . This may have been electrically comparable to the XT bus; it most certainly had some similarities since both essentially exposed the 8088 CPU's address and data buses, with some buffering and latching,

826-596: A passive physical adapter rather than requiring additional circuitry. CompactFlash is a smaller dimensioned 50 pin subset of the 68 pin PC Card interface. It requires a setting for the interface mode of either "memory" or " ATA storage". The EOMA68 open-source hardware standard uses the same 68-pin PC Card connectors and corresponds to the PC Card form factor in many other ways. Expansion card In computing , an expansion card (also called an expansion board , adapter card , peripheral card or accessory card )

885-642: A second connector for extending the address and data bus over the XT, but was backward compatible; 8-bit cards were still usable in the AT 16-bit slots. Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) became the designation for the IBM AT bus after other types were developed. Users of the ISA bus had to have in-depth knowledge of the hardware they were adding to properly connect the devices, since memory addresses, I/O port addresses, and DMA channels had to be configured by switches or jumpers on

944-422: A similar sized package which is 85.6 millimetres (3.37 in) long and 54.0 millimetres (2.13 in) wide, the same size as a credit card . The original standard was defined for both 5  V and 3.3 volt cards, with 3.3 V cards having a key on the side to prevent them from being inserted fully into a 5 V-only slot. Some cards and some slots operate at both voltages as needed. The original standard

1003-601: Is metadata stored on a PC card that contains information about the formatting and organization of the data on the card. The CIS also contains information such as: When a card is unrecognized it is frequently because the CIS information is either lost or damaged. ExpressCard is a later specification from the PCMCIA, intended as a replacement for PC Card, built around the PCI Express and USB 2.0 standards. The PC Card standard

1062-478: Is 33 MB/s; in word mode it is 66 MB/s; and in dword (double-word) mode 132 MB/s. CardBay is a variant added to the PCMCIA specification introduced in 2001. It was intended to add some forward compatibility with USB and IEEE 1394 , but was not universally adopted and only some notebooks have PC Card controllers with CardBay features. This is an implementation of Microsoft and Intel's joint Drive Bay initiative. The card information structure (CIS)

1121-409: Is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector , or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus slot) on a computer's motherboard (see also backplane ) to add functionality to a computer system. Sometimes the design of the computer's case and motherboard involves placing most (or all) of these slots onto a separate, removable card. Typically such cards are referred to as

1180-412: Is a type II PC Card intended to be plugged into a cable set-top box or digital cable-ready television. The interface has spawned a generation of flash memory cards that set out to improve on the size and features of Type I cards: CompactFlash , MiniCard , P2 Card and SmartMedia . For example, the PC Card electrical specification is also used for CompactFlash, so a PC Card CompactFlash adapter can be

1239-412: Is an expansion card that attaches to a system directly. Daughterboards often have plugs, sockets, pins or other attachments for other boards. Daughterboards often have only internal connections within a computer or other electronic devices, and usually access the motherboard directly rather than through a computer bus . Such boards are used to either improve various memory capacities of a computer, enable

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1298-486: Is closed to further development and PCMCIA strongly encourages future product designs to utilize the ExpressCard interface. From about 2006, ExpressCard slots replaced PCMCIA slots in laptop computers, with a few laptops having both in the transition period. ExpressCard and CardBus sockets are physically and electrically incompatible. ExpressCard-to-CardBus and Cardbus-to-ExpressCard adapters are available that connect

1357-455: Is effectively a 32-bit, 33 MHz PCI bus in the PC Card design. CardBus supports bus mastering , which allows a controller on the bus to talk to other devices or memory without going through the CPU . Many chipsets, such as those that support Wi-Fi , are available for both PCI and CardBus. The notch on the left hand front of the device is slightly shallower on a CardBus device so, by design,

1416-545: Is essentially a compact version of the ISA bus. The CardBus expansion card standard is an evolution of the PC card standard to make it into a compact version of the PCI bus. The original ExpressCard standard acts like it is either a USB 2.0 peripheral or a PCI Express 1.x x1 device. ExpressCard 2.0 adds SuperSpeed USB as another type of interface the card can use. Unfortunately, CardBus and ExpressCard are vulnerable to DMA attack unless

1475-553: Is no longer common. Some manufacturers such as Dell continued to offer them into 2012 on their ruggedized XFR notebooks. Mercedes-Benz used a PCMCIA card reader in the W221 S-Class for model years 2006-2009. It was used for reading media files such as MP3 audio files to play through the COMAND infotainment system. After 2009, it was replaced with a standard SD Card reader. As of 2013 , some vehicles from Honda equipped with

1534-414: Is now available as an external USB device. These USB devices have the advantage of being compatible with desktop computers as well as portable devices. (Desktop computers were rarely fitted with a PC Card or ExpressCard slot.) This reduced the requirement for internal expansion slots ; by 2011, many laptops had none. Some IBM ThinkPad laptops took their onboard RAM (in sizes ranging from 4 to 16 MB) in

1593-648: The Apple II co-existed with multi-manufacturer standards. IBM introduced what would retroactively be called the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus with the IBM PC in 1981. At that time, the technology was called the PC bus . The IBM XT , introduced in 1983, used the same bus (with slight exception). The 8-bit PC and XT bus was extended with the introduction of the IBM AT in 1984. This used

1652-685: The CP/M operating system , the 50-pin expansion slots of the original Apple II computer from 1977 (unique to Apple), IBM's Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) introduced with the IBM PC in 1981, Acorn 's tube expansion bus on the BBC Micro also from 1981, IBM's patented and proprietary Micro Channel architecture (MCA) from 1987 that never won favour in the clone market, the vastly improved Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) that displaced ISA in 1992, and PCI Express from 2003 which abstracts

1711-663: The ExpressCard interface since 2003, which was also initially developed by the PCMCIA. The organization dissolved in 2009, with its assets merged into the USB Implementers Forum . Many notebooks in the 1990s had two adjacent type-II slots, which allowed installation of two type-II cards or one, double-thickness, type-III card. The cards were also used in early digital SLR cameras, such as the Kodak DCS 300 series . However, their original use as storage expansion

1770-706: The Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis included expansion buses in some form; In the case of at least the Genesis, the expansion bus was proprietary. In fact, the cartridge slots of many cartridge-based consoles (not counting the Atari 2600 ) would qualify as expansion buses, as they exposed both read and write capabilities of the system's internal bus. However, the expansion modules attached to these interfaces, though functionally

1829-696: The PCMCIA connector, is a PCI format that attaches peripherals to the Host PCI Bus via PCI to PCI Bridge. Cardbus is being supplanted by ExpressCard format. Intel introduced the AGP bus in 1997 as a dedicated video acceleration solution. AGP devices are logically attached to the PCI bus over a PCI-to-PCI bridge. Though termed a bus, AGP usually supports only a single card at a time ( Legacy BIOS support issues). From 2005 PCI Express has been replacing both PCI and AGP. This standard, approved in 2004, implements

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1888-661: The VESA Local Bus Standard, were late 1980s expansion buses that were tied but not exclusive to the 80386 and 80486 CPU bus. The PC/104 bus is an embedded bus that copies the ISA bus. Intel launched their PCI bus chipsets along with the P5 -based Pentium CPUs in 1993. The PCI bus was introduced in 1991 as a replacement for ISA. The standard (now at version 3.0) is found on PC motherboards to this day. The PCI standard supports bus bridging: as many as ten daisy-chained PCI buses have been tested. CardBus , using

1947-456: The form factor of the motherboard and case , around one to seven expansion cards can be added to a computer system. 19 or more expansion cards can be installed in backplane systems. When many expansion cards are added to a system, total power consumption and heat dissipation become limiting factors. Some expansion cards take up more than one slot space. For example, many graphics cards on the market as of 2010 are dual slot graphics cards, using

2006-477: The 95LX or a PC. This had the advantage of raising the upper limit on capacity to the full 32 MB available under DOS 3.22 on the 95LX. New Media Corporation was one of the first companies established for the express purpose of manufacturing PC Cards; they became a major OEM for laptop manufacturers such as Toshiba and Compaq for PC Card products. It soon became clear that the PCMCIA card standard needed expansion to support "smart" I/O cards to address

2065-621: The Exchangable Card Architecture (ExCA) specification, but later merged this into the PCMCIA. SanDisk (operating at the time as "SunDisk") launched its PCMCIA card in October 1992. The company was the first to introduce a writeable Flash RAM card for the HP 95LX (an early MS-DOS pocket computer). These cards conformed to a supplemental PCMCIA-ATA standard that allowed them to appear as more conventional IDE hard drives to

2124-517: The MobilePro 200 before it, it runs on two AA batteries which last about a month. The MobilePro 450 was released in 1997. It was virtually identical to the 400 but introduced a backlight display. In addition, it is identical to the MobilePro 200 handheld, save the backlight screen and more memory. The MobilePro 700 was released in 1998. The design was significant change from earlier models with an 8.1 inch diagonal HVGA 640 x 240 display and removed

2183-582: The addition of interrupts and DMA provided by Intel add-on chips, and a few system fault detection lines (Power Good, Memory Check, I/O Channel Check). Again, PCjr sidecars are not technically expansion cards, but expansion modules, with the only difference being that the sidecar is an expansion card enclosed in a plastic box (with holes exposing the connectors). Laptops are generally unable to accept most expansion cards intended for desktop computers. Consequently, several compact expansion standards were developed. The original PC Card expansion card standard

2242-428: The association acquired the rights to the simpler term "PC Card" from IBM . This was the name of the standard from version 2 of the specification onwards. These cards were used for wireless networks , modems, and other functions in notebook PCs. After the release of PCIe -based ExpressCard in 2003, laptop manufacturers started to fit ExpressCard slots to new laptops instead of PC Card slots. All PC Card devices use

2301-430: The basic functionality of an electronic device, such as when a certain model has features added to it and is released as a new or separate model. Rather than redesigning the first model completely, a daughterboard may be added to a special connector on the main board. These usually fit on top of and parallel to the board, separated by spacers or standoffs , and are sometimes called mezzanine cards due to being stacked like

2360-401: The board for limited changes or customization. Since reliable multi-pin connectors are relatively costly, some mass-market systems such as home computers had no expansion slots and instead used a card-edge connector at the edge of the main board, putting the costly matching socket into the cost of the peripheral device. In the case of expansion of on-board capability, a motherboard may provide

2419-530: The card to match the settings in driver software. IBM's MCA bus, developed for the PS/2 in 1987, was a competitor to ISA, also their design, but fell out of favor due to the ISA's industry-wide acceptance and IBM's licensing of MCA. EISA, the 32-bit extended version of ISA championed by Compaq , was used on some PC motherboards until 1997, when Microsoft declared it a "legacy" subsystem in the PC 97 industry white-paper. Proprietary local buses (q.v. Compaq) and then

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2478-452: The computer to connect to certain kinds of networks that it previously could not connect to, or to allow for users to customize their computers for various purposes such as gaming. Daughterboards are sometimes used in computers in order to allow for expansion cards to fit parallel to the motherboard, usually to maintain a small form factor . This form are also called riser cards , or risers. Daughterboards are also sometimes used to expand

2537-468: The electrical contact between the electronics on the card and on the motherboard. Peripheral expansion cards generally have connectors for external cables. In the PC-compatible personal computer, these connectors were located in the support bracket at the back of the cabinet. Industrial backplane systems had connectors mounted on the top edge of the card, opposite to the backplane pins. Depending on

2596-598: The emerging need for fax, modem, LAN, harddisk and floppy disk cards. It also needed interrupt facilities and hot plugging , which required the definition of new BIOS and operating system interfaces. This led to the introduction of release 2.0 of the PCMCIA standard and JEIDA 4.1 in September 1991, which saw corrections and expansion with Card Services (CS) in the PCMCIA 2.1 standard in November 1992. To recognize increased scope beyond memory, and to aid in marketing,

2655-705: The factor of an IC-DRAM Card. While very similar in form-factor, these cards did not go into a standard PC Card Slot, often being installed under the keyboard, for example. They also were not pin-compatible, as they had 88 pins but in two staggered rows, as opposed to even rows like PC Cards. These correspond to versions 1 and 2 of the JEIDA memory card standard. The shape is also used by the Common Interface form of conditional-access modules for DVB , and by Panasonic for their professional "P2" video acquisition memory cards. A CableCARD conditional-access module

2714-416: The interconnect into high-speed communication "lanes" and relegates all other functions into software protocol. Vacuum-tube based computers had modular construction, but individual functions for peripheral devices filled a cabinet, not just a printed circuit board. Processor, memory and I/O cards became feasible with the development of integrated circuits . Expansion cards make processor systems adaptable to

2773-604: The introduction of the PCMCIA card, the parallel port was commonly used for portable peripherals. The PCMCIA 1.0 card standard was published by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association in November 1990 and was soon adopted by more than eighty vendors. It corresponds with the Japanese JEIDA memory card 4.0 standard. It was originally developed to support Memory cards . Intel authored

2832-414: The laptop has an IOMMU that is configured to thwart these attacks. One notable exception to the above is the inclusion of a single internal slot for a special reduced size version of the desktop standard. The most well known examples are Mini-PCI or Mini PCIe . Such slots were usually intended for a specific purpose such as offering "built-in" wireless networking or upgrading the system at production with

2891-526: The logical PCI protocol over a serial communication interface. PC/104(-Plus) or Mini PCI are often added for expansion on small form factor boards such as Mini-ITX . For their 1000 EX and 1000 HX models, Tandy Computer designed the PLUS expansion interface, an adaptation of the XT-bus supporting cards of a smaller form factor. Because it is electrically compatible with the XT bus (a.k.a. 8-bit ISA or XT-ISA),

2950-401: The need for a docking cradle. It added a VGA port, a 33.6K modem, a compact flash slot and an internal microphone. It had 8 MB of RAM, Windows CE 2.0 and a 54 MHz NEC VR4102 MIPS processor. The MobilePro 750 was released in 1998. It was the first MobilePro to feature a 256 colour display. It had 16 MB of RAM, Windows CE 2.0 and an NEC VR4111 80 MHz processor. The MobilePro 750c is

3009-557: The needs of the user by making it possible to connect various types of devices, including I/O, additional memory, and optional features (such as a floating point unit ) to the central processor. Minicomputers, starting with the PDP-8 , were made of multiple cards communicating through, and powered by, a passive backplane . The first commercial microcomputer to feature expansion slots was the Micral N , in 1973. The first company to establish

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3068-487: The rarest MobilePro on the market. The MobilePro 770 was released in 1999. It added a 4096 colour display and a 56K modem. It had 32 MB of RAM, Windows CE 2.11 and a 131 MHz NEC VR4121 MIPS processor. The MobilePro 800 was released in 1999. It had specifications similar to the 770, but had a larger 9 inch 800 x 600 display and a USB port. The MobilePro 780 was released in 2000. It had an 8.1 inch 640 x 240 64K colour display, 32 MB of RAM, Windows CE 2.11 and

3127-547: The same as expansion cards, are not technically expansion cards, due to their physical form. The primary purpose of an expansion card is to provide or expand on features not offered by the motherboard. For example, the original IBM PC did not have on-board graphics or hard drive capability. In that case, a graphics card and an ST-506 hard disk controller card provided graphics capability and hard drive interface respectively. Some single-board computers made no provision for expansion cards, and may only have provided IC sockets on

3186-582: The second slot as a place to put an active heat sink with a fan. Some cards are "low-profile" cards, meaning that they are shorter than standard cards and will fit in a lower height computer chassis such as HTPC and SFF . (There is a "low profile PCI card" standard that specifies a much smaller bracket and board area). The group of expansion cards that are used for external connectivity, such as network , SAN or modem cards, are commonly referred to as input/output cards (or I/O cards). A daughterboard , daughtercard , mezzanine board or piggyback board

3245-400: The user. Other computer buses were used for industrial control, instruments, and scientific systems. One specific example is HP-IB (or Hewlett Packard Interface Bus) which was ultimately standardized as IEEE-488 (aka GPIB). Some well-known historical standards include VMEbus , STD Bus , SBus (specific to Sun's SPARCStations), and numerous others. Many other video game consoles such as

3304-471: Was built around an 'enhanced' 16-bit ISA bus platform. A newer version of the PCMCIA standard is CardBus (see below), a 32-bit version of the original standard. In addition to supporting a wider bus of 32 bits (instead of the original 16), CardBus also supports bus mastering and operation speeds up to 33 MHz. CardBus are PCMCIA 5.0 or later (JEIDA 4.2 or later) 32-bit PCMCIA devices, introduced in 1995 and present in laptops from late 1997 onward. CardBus

3363-578: Was introduced as a 32-bit version of the original PC Card, based on the PCI specification. The card slots are backward compatible for the original 16-bit card, older slots are not forward compatible with newer cards. Although originally designed as a standard for memory- expansion cards for computer storage , the existence of a usable general standard for notebook peripherals led to the development of many kinds of devices including network cards , modems , and hard disks . The PC Card port has been superseded by

3422-1025: Was released in 2002. Unlike the rest of the MobilePro range, the P300 was a Pocket PC without a keyboard. It had a compact flash card slot and an SD card slot. It had 32 MB of RAM, a 206 MHz Intel StrongARM processor and ran Windows Pocket PC 2002. OS: Windows CE 3.0 / Handheld PC 2000 Bundled applications: Pocket Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Voice recorder, World Clock, Calculator, Solitaire, Terminal, ActiveSync, Remote Networking, Terminal Server Client CPU: 400 MHz Intel XScale PXA255 Memory: 64 MB RAM SDRAM / 64 MB Flash ROM (32 MB for user applications and data) Display: 8.1 inch HVGA (640 x 240) display I/O interfaces: 56 kbit/s V.90 modem USB ports Serial port PC Card Type I/II slot Compact Flash Type I/II slot Infrared (Fast IR) Dimensions: 9.7 x 8.25 x 1.2 in. Weight: under 2 lbs. (with standard battery) The MobilePro 900c

3481-488: Was released in 2004. It had similar specifications to the 900 but ran Windows CE .NET 4.2 and could support using mass storage devices. PC Card PC Card is a parallel peripheral interface for laptop computers and PDAs . The PCMCIA originally introduced the 16-bit ISA -based PCMCIA Card in 1990, but renamed it to PC Card in March 1995 to avoid confusion with the name of the organization. The CardBus PC Card

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