PCMCIA Bus Interface Cards

PCMCIA bus interface cards translate data from a PCMCIA bus to another type of bus, and vice versa. They are used to connect two incompatible buses. Common bus types include industry standard architecture (ISA), peripheral component interconnect (PCI), universal serial bus (USB), and general-purpose interface bus (GPIB). Suppliers of PCMCIA bus interface cards categorize products into networking and connectivity areas based these and other bus types. The size and capabilities of a PCMCIA bus interface card depend upon user requirements including mobile devices, workstations, and servers. Some PCMCIA devices can be used in CardBus slots.

Some PCMCIA bus interface cards facilitate communications of programmable instruments that use the general-purpose interface bus (GPIB). GPIB is a 24-pin connector interface operating under IEEE 488 standards that permits the connection of up to fifteen chained devices. CompactFlash is another supported architecture that uses 50-pin required to interface with 68-pin standards of PCMCIA. CompactFlash can operate at 3.3 V or 5.0 V capacities. The PC/104 architecture uses 3.5-inch "stackable" circuit boards to facilitate data movement across the interconnected bus formed by the cards. PCMCIA bus interface cards then interconnect the ISA standard of the PC/104 boards, or the PCI interface of PC/104+ boards.

PMCIA bus interface cards work with Ethernet, a common network architecture which is specified under IEEE 802.3 standards. Because Ethernet uses a simple bus or star typology, a PCMCIA bus interface card can be used for communications between a remote computer network interface card and any number of network interfaces. Unlike PC and PCI-based ports that communicate serially via the RS232 protocol, PCMCIA bus interface cards for Ethernet govern data processing through the use of network protocols. These network protocols are uses throughout open systems interconnect (OSI) layers and provide communications in both local area networks (LAN) and wide area network (WAN). Most WANs are connected by analog phone lines, integrated services digital networks (ISDN), or high-speed fiber optic trunks.

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