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Bridge to attach a PCI device to a PC-card socket?

A

Aaron Lawrence

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi all.

I understand that PC[MCIA] Cards are basically an extension of the PCI
bus. Therefore, I wonder if it is possible to make a bridge board that
allows a PCI card to be "plugged into" a PC-Card socket.

Normally of course, you go the other way: providing a PC-Card socket on
a PCI card. There's lots of those available off the shelf.

The reason being that we have a custom PCI card, that's not worth
redesigning to fit into PCCard, but it would be nice to be able to
attach it that way for marketing demos, etc. It doesn't matter if the
interface is a bit ugly, e.g needing external power.


Thanks for your thoughts!

Aaron
 
S

Steve

Jan 1, 1970
0
Aaron said:
Hi all.

I understand that PC[MCIA] Cards are basically an extension of the PCI
bus. Therefore, I wonder if it is possible to make a bridge board that
allows a PCI card to be "plugged into" a PC-Card socket.

Normally of course, you go the other way: providing a PC-Card socket on
a PCI card. There's lots of those available off the shelf.

The reason being that we have a custom PCI card, that's not worth
redesigning to fit into PCCard, but it would be nice to be able to
attach it that way for marketing demos, etc. It doesn't matter if the
interface is a bit ugly, e.g needing external power.


Thanks for your thoughts!

Aaron

Aaron,
I question your statement that PCMCIA cards are anything like
the PCI bus. Just compare the pin outs.

http://www.hardwarebook.net/connector/bus/pcmcia.html
http://www.techfest.com/hardware/bus/pci.htm

There are no converters such as you want that I'm aware of.

Thanks, Steve
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
Steve said:
I question your statement that PCMCIA cards are anything like
the PCI bus. Just compare the pin outs.

He really means CardBus, not PCMCIA. Any contemporary laptop PC supports
both through the same connector (through some clever mass-pin-redefinition
for the newer CardBus standard), so it's not too surprising that people
confuse the two.

I believe that CardBus 'cards' are supposed to provide some additional data
in their configuration spaces relative to power control that PCI cards
don't, but I imagine you can get by without it (PCs being almost expected to
'work' even with poorly designed hardware and all... :) ).

A quick Google search turns up this
http://www.digitalaudiowave.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=372.
Not cheap, but seems like it'd get the job done.

---Joel Kolstad
 
A

Aaron Lawrence

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi Joel,

That's the perfect device! I couldn't think of the right google search
to find it, obviously. Looks like Magma are the only people doing it,
and it sure is expensive but it does the job.

Joel said:
He really means CardBus, not PCMCIA. Any contemporary laptop PC supports
both through the same connector (through some clever mass-pin-redefinition
for the newer CardBus standard), so it's not too surprising that people
confuse the two.

Thanks for the clarification :)

Regards

Aaron
 
A

Aaron Lawrence

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi Joel,

That's the perfect device! I couldn't think of the right google search
to find it, obviously. Looks like Magma are the only people doing it,
and it sure is expensive but it does the job.

Joel said:
He really means CardBus, not PCMCIA. Any contemporary laptop PC supports
both through the same connector (through some clever mass-pin-redefinition
for the newer CardBus standard), so it's not too surprising that people
confuse the two.

Thanks for the clarification :)

Regards

Aaron
 
S

Steve

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joel said:
He really means CardBus, not PCMCIA. Any contemporary laptop PC supports
both through the same connector (through some clever mass-pin-redefinition
for the newer CardBus standard), so it's not too surprising that people
confuse the two.

I believe that CardBus 'cards' are supposed to provide some additional data
in their configuration spaces relative to power control that PCI cards
don't, but I imagine you can get by without it (PCs being almost expected to
'work' even with poorly designed hardware and all... :) ).

A quick Google search turns up this
http://www.digitalaudiowave.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=372.
Not cheap, but seems like it'd get the job done.

---Joel Kolstad

Learn something new everyday. I did some work with PCMCIA on a 683xx MCU
system more years ago than I'd like to mention and cPCI work more recently, and
didn't think they were at all related. Confirming your clarification, I found
this pinout at http://www.pcmcia.org/pccardstandard.htm#2

Cardbus is indeed not your father's PCMCIA.

I am curious about the adapter you point out. Ideally the adapter adds
another PCI bus and bridge to the system, but I wonder how (non?) transparently
it allows access to the PCI card. My guess is the PCI to Cardbus to PCI
bridging may not be seen by the initial BIOS PCI bus scan of the laptop.
Presumably there are some "Patented MAGMA PCI Expansion Technology" registers
that must be banged to initialize it and work some magic to map PCI through
the Cardbus.... well maybe the Cardbus adapter adds a BIOS extension to deal
with that, too. Ultimately, I assume in order for this to be useful, one
should not have to rewrite their PCI card drivers. Neat. Still, there must
be some limits; but it "ain't" bandwidth, as they claim plenty 'o that...

Thanks, Steve
 
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