4 ms·
I always liked PCMCIA slots -- you could add a whole bunch of different features to your machine in a fairly compact format. It's sad that laptops ditched them
by tomc1985 7y ago
I always liked PCMCIA slots -- you could add a whole bunch of different features to your machine in a fairly compact format. It's sad that laptops ditched them so long ago
- rsl7 7y agoI had that Apple powerbook G3 that had two hot swap bays for batteries/hard drives/media players AND a PCMCIA slot. Oh, and built-in ethernet. I remember adding Firewire support via PCMCIA. Good times.
- fletchowns 7y agoI had an Orinico Gold WiFi card in my PCMCIA expansion pack for a Compaq Ipaq PDA back in the early 2000s. It was awesome!
- cnasc 7y agoI have a fond memory of my older brother buying an Orinoco card and putting it in his laptop and then us cruising around town wardriving back in the day
- tomrod 7y agoWhat does wardriving mean?
- owenmarshall 7y agoWardriving was driving around town with a laptop scanning for WiFi access points without any encryption. Most wardrivers would have a GPS card and software that’d build a map up as you drive of all SSIDs and locations, which could be uploaded and contributed to by others. This was back before ubiquitous open WiFi and encryption.
- ethbro 7y agoSlight amendment. The heyday of wardriving (IMHO) was before the industry got its shit together with WPA. Because before WPA, there was WEP. Which it turns out had multiple vulnerabilities, given enough traffic. https://www.dummies.com/programming/networking/understanding-wep-weaknesses/ https://www.dummies.com/programming/networking/understanding... Ergo, there was a period from ~1999-2004 whereby one could aim a Pringles cantenna at a neighbor's AP and crack their WEP password in order-of-an-evening (depending on how much traffic they were generating). Not that I ever did such a thing, mind you.
- fletchowns 7y agoUsed it for that too! https://i.imgur.com/omNpSPr.jpg https://i.imgur.com/omNpSPr.jpg
- mveety 7y agoThey’re great cards and easy to write drivers for. I still use one in one of my thinkpads for wireless because it used to be the only card supported by 9front and plan 9 back in the day.
- LeoPanthera 7y agoAs far as I know the only type still in common use is CableCard, which I believe your cable company is legally obliged to support, and enables things like Tivo and HDHomeRun to work.
- hbcondo714 7y agoI still pay Spectrum $2.50 a month for a CableCARD in my ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner that powers my HTPC setup running Windows 8 Media Center
- azernik 7y agoThey just went smaller - Thunderbolt implements PCIe [1] under the hood. You can connect graphics cards over TB, for example. [1] It actually implements three protocols that it can switch between based on endpoint negotiation - PCIe, DisplayPort, and in its latest version USB 3.1.
- faissaloo 7y agoOnly problem with Thunderbolt is that it's not an open standard.
- azernik 7y agoIt is now! Intel released the rights to USB-IF earlier this year, and it will be the basis of USB4: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/thunderbolt-3-becomes-usb4-as-intels-interconnect-goes-royalty-free/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/thunderbolt-3-become...
- billyhoffman 7y agoHonestly, I have always enjoyed just saying the acronym “PCMCIA”. It has a nice rhythm: “PCM.... CIA”
- squiggleblaz 7y agoBut the problem was that People Couldn't Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms.