Laptop: how to tell card bus from pcmcia

caustik

i have little hands-on experience with laptops, whats the best way to determain if a card slot is cardbus or pcmcia ?

is it written some where or can i look for a certain some thing in device manager or something like that?

reloaded

Generally, PCMCIA is talking about just a standard laptop expansion card. However, there are distinct differences here if you really wanna know:

PCMCIA was the original expansion card standard, it was 16 bit and was divided up into types 1 - 3.

Cardbus is really an extention of PCMCIA in which it can pass 32 bit data. It also supports bus mastering and can operate at 33 MHz.

Most of today's laptop cards are Cardbus standard cards. So...if you wanna really know what you have, take a look at the system requirements on the laptop card you get. Or take a look at the card itself. Remember, it could say PCMCIA, but in reality, work as cardbus. Kind of confusing, sorry.

My 2 pence.

caustik

the cards themselves say card bus on them but how do i tell what the slot itself can take?

im buying a wireless card for my father and need to be able to tell him over the phone how to tell if the laptop can accept cardbus or just pcmcia cards.

16-bit pcmcia will work in either case but i'd rather get 32 bit cardbus theres no price difference.