With the PCMCIA group now some 450 to 500 members strong, it is impossible in this limited space to mention even a significant percentage of the participants who are making a contribution to improving the PC Card standard. But a number of products and companies stand out, and they deserve special mention.
One of the more important aspects of the new vistas available to PCMCIA is the move to desktop computers and other digital devices. At this point, only a few desktop vendors offer card slots as a standard on their systems, and a few more offer it as an option. IBM has the PS/2 E (the company's so-called green machine), which has four slots, and NCR has a system with two slots in front and two in back.
But if your desktop system doesn't have a slot, and a new computer isn't in your budget, don't despair. CNF (Morgan Hill,
CA) and SCM Microsystems (Los Gatos, CA) provide desktop access to PCMCIA with their reader/writer products. Both vendors provide ISA-compatible (SCM also ofers PCI-compatible [Peripheral Component Interconnect]) cards that support a 3 1/2-inch Type III slot mounted on the drive bay (front access) and a card slot mounted directly on the ISA card itself (rear access). Over the next year or two, expect to see this arrangement as a standard feature of desktop PCs. Many will probably be produced by one of these two vendors as an OEM.
In fact, SCM has just released a product that features a Type III slot and a 3 1/2-inch floppy drive in the same unit. Jack Peterson, director of marketing at SCM, says that ``the manufacturer has to provide the floppy drive anyway. If they can add PCMCIA capability for $20 to $30, there is real value added for the customer.''
Very few, if any, system vendors write their own Card and Socket Services software, which is essentially an extension of the system BIOS. Like B
IOS, it is frequently written by a third party, with collaboration from--and modifications made by--the host-platform vendor. Award, Phoenix, SystemSoft, and Ventura Microsystems are among the companies that provide this vital link between PC Cards and host platforms. SystemSoft currently has the lion's share of the market, providing software for Acer, AST, AT&T, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, NEC, NCR, and others.
On the card side, SyQuest (Fremont, CA), the removable hard disk company, has a 1.8-inch product that fits in a Type III slot. Each formatted cartridge (1.97 inches wide by 2.03 inches long by 0.193 inches high) will hold 80 MB of native (uncompressed) data. This unit offers all the benefits of a hard drive (5400 rpm, 16-millisecond seek time, and 1.3-MBps sustained data transfer rate) coupled with the cost savings of a removable drive.
The price of this unit is expected to be under $500, with additional cartridges priced at or just under $1 per MB. Chandran Cheriyan, product
marketing manager for SyQuest's 1.8-inch product line, says that ``this puts the break-even cost point between the second and third cartridge, compared to adding equivalent storage capacity in a noncartridge Winchester. And we plan to increase the capacity of our cartridges.''
High-speed communications has also come to PCMCIA. In June, Microcom (Norwood, MA) began shipping a 28.8-Kbps fax modem in the PC Card form factor. Suggested retail price of the unit, called the TravelCard Fast 28.8, is $599--not inexpensive, but reasonable when you consider that two systems can share it. In addition, its high data transfer rate should significantly reduce phone-line charges. The TravelCard Fast 28.8 overcomes a Windows data transfer rate bottleneck by using Microcom's APT (Advanced Parallel Technology) software, which, as the name indicates, enables a modem to operate as a parallel device.
Dave Lawrence, president of Ventura Microsystems and a firm believer in the standard, thinks the PC Card standard is
at the stage where developers are beginning to understand both the technology and the scope of the market. ``The biggest problem they [members of the PCMCIA group] have today is people with existing products who are breaking the rules,'' he says. ``The great thing about PCMCIA is that the technology, except for the dynamic insertion part, is not new. It's basically just a question of putting standard devices in smaller form factors.''
Steve Magidson of the PCMCIA group sums up the situation pretty well: ``An awful lot of the credit goes to the vendors themselves, who have taken it upon themselves to ensure that their products work together. With as many different interests represented as there are in this organization, it is somewhat amazing that we have accomplished anything at all.''
PCMCIA Players and Products
