Bridge to attach a PCI device to a PC-card socket?

[Aaron Lawrence]

Hi all.

I understand that PC[MCIA] Cards are basically an extension of the PCI
bus. Therefore, I wonder if it is possible to make a bridge board that
allows a PCI card to be "plugged into" a PC-Card socket.

Normally of course, you go the other way: providing a PC-Card socket on
a PCI card. There's lots of those available off the shelf.

The reason being that we have a custom PCI card, that's not worth
redesigning to fit into PCCard, but it would be nice to be able to
attach it that way for marketing demos, etc. It doesn't matter if the
interface is a bit ugly, e.g needing external power.


Thanks for your thoughts!

Aaron

 

[Joel Kolstad]

"Steve" <nospam@bit.bucket> wrote in message
news:cs4dh4$l0l$1@grandcanyon.binc.net...

I question your statement that PCMCIA cards are anything like
the PCI bus. Just compare the pin outs.

He really means CardBus, not PCMCIA. Any contemporary laptop PC supports
both through the same connector (through some clever mass-pin-redefinition
for the newer CardBus standard), so it's not too surprising that people
confuse the two.

I believe that CardBus 'cards' are supposed to provide some additional data
in their configuration spaces relative to power control that PCI cards
don't, but I imagine you can get by without it (PCs being almost expected to
'work' even with poorly designed hardware and all... ).

A quick Google search turns up this
http://www.digitalaudiowave.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=372.
Not cheap, but seems like it'd get the job done.

---Joel Kolstad

 

[Aaron Lawrence]

Hi Joel,

That's the perfect device! I couldn't think of the right google search
to find it, obviously. Looks like Magma are the only people doing it,
and it sure is expensive but it does the job.

Joel Kolstad wrote:

He really means CardBus, not PCMCIA. Any contemporary laptop PC supports
both through the same connector (through some clever mass-pin-redefinition
for the newer CardBus standard), so it's not too surprising that people
confuse the two.

Thanks for the clarification

Regards

Aaron

 

[Aaron Lawrence]

Hi Joel,

That's the perfect device! I couldn't think of the right google search
to find it, obviously. Looks like Magma are the only people doing it,
and it sure is expensive but it does the job.

Joel Kolstad wrote:

He really means CardBus, not PCMCIA. Any contemporary laptop PC supports
both through the same connector (through some clever mass-pin-redefinition
for the newer CardBus standard), so it's not too surprising that people
confuse the two.

Thanks for the clarification

Regards

Aaron