
PCMCIA History: From Laptops to CableCards - zdw
http://tedium.co/2017/01/26/pcmcia-pc-card-laptop-expansion-history/
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mmastrac
This took me a while to read because I ended up going down the rabbit hole of
reading about the PoqetPC - a tiny subnotebook that could last for weeks or
months on two AAs:
[http://www.bmason.com/PoqetPC/](http://www.bmason.com/PoqetPC/)

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nikanj
I would pay lots for a modern thing with that form factor.

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mojoB
The Pandora [1] is a few years old at this point. I had one for a short while
and wasn't too impressed. There will be an update called the Pyra [2] coming
later this year.

[1]
[https://www.openpandora.org/index.html](https://www.openpandora.org/index.html)

[2] [https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/](https://pyra-
handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/)

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jevinskie
I'm not sure why the article laments CableCard. It allows me to watch most of
my cable channels using my HD HomeRun ethernet CableCard tuner using just VLC.
The premium (think HBO) channels are protected by DTCP DRM but lets just say
that isn't the most secure DRM ever. The proposed VidiPath replacement is just
going to lock down the TV experience even more. It will allow cable companies
to have a DRMed path to your display where they control every pixel, including
the guide and DVR interface. It is directly aimed at taking out the likes of
Tivo and Silicon Dust.

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bcrescimanno
The primary lament of CableCard is that it's so poorly implemented that the
vast majority of people aren't even aware that it exists. Moreover, things
like "On Demand" content are baked into the cost of my subscription and I
can't take advantage of them through a CableCard.

Cable Television, as we perceive it today, is in a steady decline (I'd cite
something; but even the most cursory Google search will turn up dozens of
articles confirming). While I recognize your concern about the cable company
ownership and DRM, I believe that over-the-top services like Sling or DirecTV
Now in conjunction with Netflix and Amazon are far bigger threat to Tivo and
the like than anything the cable companies themselves can do.

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dragonwriter
But DirecTV Now _is_ , while not a traditional cable service, something a
cable company is doing.

And that makes it the biggest threat to Netflix when net neutrality (and
particularly the specific prohibition on ISPs favoring their own video
services) is killed by the new leadership at the FCC.

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compuguy
I agree that things like DirecTV now is the future. As long as those services
are owned by companies that have traditional cable/satellite/fiber services,
they are going to try to upsell or limit these services.

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dragontamer
It should be noted that the modern "expansion bus" is not PCI or other such
busses... but USB3.1.

Today, the best audio drivers are external USB DACs and amplifiers. You can
extend your storage with GB of USB flash storage. USB->Serial has kept up as a
legacy option (although its latency issues and Win7 transition has made things
difficult to work with in practice... gotta keep that old WinXP box to work
with a lot of Serial stuff. But that's not USB's fault per se and more about
Windows Vista's new security model).

Audio (DAC, Headphones, Synthesizers, USB->MIDI, Instruments), Storage (USB
Flash Drives, USB Hard Drives), video game peripherals (XBox Controllers, PS4
Controllers, Joysticks, Driving Wheels), even legacy (USB->Serial Modems if
you really need it) are all supported from the 5Gbps USB3.0 port.

\--------

PCMCIA was needed in the 90s because computing power wasn't good enough. DMA
transfers, directly to the computer's RAM, was the only way to get latency /
bandwidth requirements of practical devices.

Furthermore, hardware interfaces were obscure. Your "Jazz drive" external
storage was SCSI based and required a specific device. USB internet modems
were years away from being invented (and thus you used PCMCIA modems on those
laptops).

In essence... PCMCIA was the way you attached external devices to laptops back
then. More so than USB or Firewire. Modern interfaces are more secure, more
inter-operable, and faster.

I mean, those flash-sticks require a rather beefy CPU to handle all of the
USB-packets that go back and forth between the OS and the USB stick. That
level of miniature processor power just didn't exist in the 90s, so "dumb"
hardware attachments had to use simple direct-to-memory transfers through a
relatively simple bus. I wouldn't be surprised if a modern USB-stick's
processor had more computing power than 90s-era laptops.

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throwawayish
> I wouldn't be surprised if a modern USB-stick's processor had more computing
> power than 90s-era laptops.

Data transfers are handled in hardware; the MCU in these is not really
powerful. Many are just 8051s. USB 3.0 controllers are a bit beefier, though.

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krige
I actually had one of the two Amiga models (A600) that traded the generic
properitary expansion slot for a PCMCIA one. However, living in the country I
live in I never actually encountered a PCMCIA _card_. Catching on the topic
years later it turned out I did not miss on much, PCMCIA being not very well
defined at the time of A600's design phase, the slot wasn't really useful for
anything more than a slow flash based disk drive or very sluggish memory
expansion (there were some really neat gizmos you could put in there, but
those came about YEARS later)

