PCMCIA cards and accessories follow standards developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA), an international standards body and trade organization. PCMCIA cards, or PC cards as they are commonly known, were designed originally for adding memory to portable computers, but are now used in a variety of devices

Wireless modems transmit modulated data using electromagnetic waves.

Network cards and network controllers are expansion boards inserted into computers that allow them to connect to a network

Bus adapters connect peripherals to computers that do not provide native support for a peripheral's interface. Some bus adapters are housed in cables that connect one bus to another. Others are board-level cards, blades, or stand-alone units with interfaces and power supplies

Network modems (modulators-demodulators) are devices or programs that allow computers to transmit data over telephone lines. They convert digital computer data to analog sound waves and then demodulate the carrier signals to decode the transmitted information.

Hard drives are integral, non-volatile, electronic data storage units inside computers. Traditionally, hard drives were hard-wired into computers. Removeable hard disks and drives are also available.

Data acquisition I/O modules or cards have both input and output functionality. Digital or discrete I/O modules include on-off signals used in communication, user interface, or control.

Serial communication products are used in industrial and commercial systems to transmit data bit-by-bit, or sequentially, over a single wire. They include serial servers, serial hubs, serial adapters, serial data converters, serial routers, and serial multiplexers.

Software drivers are programs that provide the interface between general use software (such as an operating system) and specific hardware or software modules. With personal computers (PCs), drivers are often packaged as dynamic link library (DLL) files.

Single board computers (SBC) serve as the motherboard for instrumentation systems including modern PCs. SBCs are composed of a microprocessor, memory chip, and serial and parallel interfaces to communicate with other devices.

Analog-to-digital converters (ADC) sample an analog signal and convert it to a series of digital values to represent the signal to a computer processor.

Serial communication adapters provide one or more serial ports to a host computer. They interface with the host computer via a data bus and add RS232, RS422, RS485 and/or other types of serial ports.

Radio modems are radio frequency transceivers for serial data. They connect to serial ports (RS232, RS422, etc.) and transmit to and receive signals from another matching radio modem.

Bus extenders are used to increase cable lengths for distance-limited bus protocols.

Access points are transmitter / receivers (transceivers) that connect to a network through an interface such as a bus or connector. They receive, store, and transmit data between the wireless LAN and the wired structure.