What is PCMCIA and how does it work?
(Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) (Compute’s Getting Started with PCMCIA) by Richard O. Mann It hasn’t been long since coat-pocket sized computers were the exclusive province of science fiction. Now science fiction writers–along with the rest of us–actually have computers as small as we could want. The challenge is not how to shrink them further but how to bring the power and expandability of desktop computers to the smallest PCs. Obviously, there’s noway to open up a palmtop computer and insert an extra memory board or modem, so a new way to provide these needed functions had to be developed. Enter the PCMCIA, or Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, a group that sets industry-wide standards for the tiny credit-card sized expansion devices that solve this problem. The association named the devices PC Cards, but you’ll often hear them referred to as PCMCIA cards and slots. The association was formed in 1989 as many manufacturers were prepari
