PCMCIA stands for Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, an international trade association and the standards they have developed for devices, such as modems and external hard disk drives, that can be plugged into notebook computers. A PCMCIA card is about the size of a credit card. PCMCIA cards are also known as PC Cards.

This term describes a standard for extension cards for mobile computers, which served predominantly at first as mobile data memories. In addition, at present modems, network maps and other applications with these maps were realized. They work currentsaving and supported Plug and Play, are thus during operation changeable. There are three different types (TYPE I, TYPE II and TYPE III), which essentially differ by their height. All types have a surface area in the cheque card format and are thereby very compactly and easy to transport. In the meantime PCMCIA was developed further to the Cardbus standard. The 16 bits data capacity was changed to 32 bits and the frequency was increased to 33MHz.

PC Card sizes:

• Type I - usually SRAM or Flash memory
• Type II - very common type used by network cards and modems
• Type III - for hard drives

Cardbus is a 32-bit version of the PCMCIA (PC Card) bus.

According to Brian Zucker, a technology strategist for Dell Computer (as cited in the PC World article listed in the "References" section), current PCMCIA cards as of 23 February 2004 would eventually be replaced by PCI-Express card technology.

References