SillyDog701

[Antony]

Are you looking to expand your laptop with FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) ports?


The FireWire 800 / 1394b Professional Express Card (34 mm) interface adapter is now available from NitroAV.

This Firewire 800 express card provides two FireWire 800 ports and works under Windows 2000 and later and Mac OS X 10.4.6 (Intel-based).

Users of MacBook Pro 15" can make a benefit of two additional FireWire 800 ports with this Express Card 34. (MacBook Pro 17" has built-in FireWire 800 port.)

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[Don_HH2K]

ExpressCard/34 is still an emerging standard, and has yet to be found in the majority of laptops. NitroAV also sells a PCMCIA variant of the ExpressCard model, which also features a DC power input jack and an extra IEEE 1394a / FireWire 400 jack.

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[Antony]

According to Wikipedia, besides Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM (Lenovo), Dell and ASUS shipped systems with ExpressCard/34.

Also, as ExpressCard FAQ mentioned, ExpressCard is a new standard introduced by PCMCIA, and designed to replace PC Cards (PCMCIA 2.0).

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[Don_HH2K]

The fact that there are manufacturers shipping ExpressCard/34 models doesn't mean that everybody has bought an ExpressCard/34-capable notebook yet.

It doesn't mean that, becuase there's a new standard, that people have to move to that standard rapidly. A 32-bit PCMCIA slot runs at 133MB/sec, while FireWire 800 runs at 80MB/sec. That's enough bandwidth to support a FireWire 800 connection, or even a gigabit Ethernet connection (which is 100MB/sec).

PCI Express has a total bandwidth of 2.5GB/sec. Do we even have any interface, save for graphics boards and other such controllers, that give that kind of throughput?

Given, the future has to come someday, but that doesn't mean that I absolutely need to stop using my old PCMCIA cards (even the 16-bit ones that I still use) and jump to ExpressCard for awhile.

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[Antony]

It doesn't mean that, becuase there's a new standard, that people have to move to that standard rapidly. A 32-bit PCMCIA slot runs at 133MB/sec, while FireWire 800 runs at 80MB/sec. That's enough bandwidth to support a FireWire 800 connection, or even a gigabit Ethernet connection (which is 100MB/sec).

I take the "B" stands for "byte" in your MB/sec.

The mentioned "133MB/sec" is only available to CardBus when the data is in 32 bits.

CardBus (32 bit burst mode)
* Byte mode: 33 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 66 Mbytes/sec
* DWord mode: 132 Mbytes/sec

The benefits of ExpressCard over PCMCIA cards:

1. Size. ExpressCard modules are roughly half the size of PC Card, as well as being lighter (34 or 54 mm x 5 mm x 75 mm for ExpressCard vs. 54 mm x 85.6 mm x 5 mm for CardBus). See side-by-side comparison here.
2. Speed. ExpressCard modules use serial (PCI Express and USB 2.0) data interfaces rather than the ISA (16-bit PC Card) or PCI (CardBus) parallel bus interfaces, improving bus speed in data transfer while reducing the number of signals needed in the interface (2.5 Gb/s [PCI Express] or 480 Mb/s [USB 2.0] for the ExpressCard interface vs. 132 MB/s maximum theoretical throughput for the CardBus interface.)
3. Cost. Because of its streamlined system and mechanical design, ExpressCard designs are anticipated to have a lower implementation cost. Additionally, existing PCI Express and USB 2.0 silicon implementations can be repackaged into ExpressCard modules.
4. Less power. ExpressCard modules require less power than has traditionally been required.

(more at ExpressCard.org)

Where the size and less power are two crucial factors. Particularly for 1-inch thin laptops.

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