expresscard/54

paul rope · 17 Feb 2009 at 14:54

I am on my laptop and I just see this thing I can pull out.. It is a black tray and at the top off it it says >expresscard/54< What is it?

Simian · 17 Feb 2009 at 19:23

PCMCIA replacement... Firewire cards, TV Tuners etc...

paul rope · 17 Feb 2009 at 21:25

Still don't get what it is for

Simian · 18 Feb 2009 at 08:42

Hopefully not against the rules...
Here's a few things you can plug into it!..

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3135

http://www.lexar.com/ssd/expresscard.html

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr1500.html

Its just extra periferals that can be plugged into the laptop at much faster speeds than USB/Firewire/PCMCIA etc...

The 'Tray' thing is just a blanking plate to protect the connectors in the slot!.. My Laptop had a WinMCE remote in there in place of the 'Tray'...

cavemanoc · 18 Feb 2009 at 19:15

Are there any storage cards with decent speed ratings? Given the Pci-e 1x slot we should be able to see some blistering speeds...

james.miller · 18 Feb 2009 at 19:21

well, a 16gb scandisk extreme IV is capable of 45MB/sec if you belief their blurb - i dont know what they really test out at.

There are lots of uses for express cards - sound cards, extra usb slots, wireless cards, even e-sata ports

cavemanoc · 18 Feb 2009 at 20:06

even that is pretty poor- the slot should be capable of supporting >200MB/s as it stands - would be nice to see something like the Vertex/Intel adapted for this - make a nice second drive for the laptop.

Aod · 20 Feb 2009 at 12:52

cavemanoc said:
even that is pretty poor- the slot should be capable of supporting >200MB/s as it stands - would be nice to see something like the Vertex/Intel adapted for this - make a nice second drive for the laptop.

45MB/s is pretty damn excellent for flash memory though.

cavemanoc · 20 Feb 2009 at 13:13

Granted - I have been thoroughly spoilt by the incredible advances in the SLC and MLC based drives - but that's the point - I want an MLC based drive for this slot, with all the associated tech advantages that they bring over the 'standard' flash cards.

Yep - I'm just that greedy

james.miller · 20 Feb 2009 at 15:04

cavemanoc said:
Granted - I have been thoroughly spoilt by the incredible advances in the SLC and MLC based drives - but that's the point - I want an MLC based drive for this slot, with all the associated tech advantages that they bring over the 'standard' flash cards.

Yep - I'm just that greedy

so buy an express card with esata ports and buy an MLC solid state drive then!

cavemanoc · 20 Feb 2009 at 19:20

james.miller said:
so buy an express card with esata ports and buy an MLC solid state drive then!

I know my xps1710 isn't exactly compact - but that really would start to stretch the bounds of 'portable'

- Surely it's only a matter of time before we start to see these? That aside - at a reasonable price a 45mb/s one would be brilliant for readyboost.

Aod · 22 Feb 2009 at 17:07

and if readyboost was actually useful in machines that had more than 1GB of ram, that would be a good idea! \o/