this looks sick as hell. i wonder whether there are viable NE2000 drivers for PowerBooks running classic Mac OS? modern WiFi (even limited by PCMCIA) might be preferable to era-appropriate WiFi. not much you can get an Orinoco card to talk to these days if you can even find one.
PicoPCMCIA – a PCMCIA development board for retro-computing enthusiasts
11–20 of 31 posts
Re: PicoPCMCIA – a PCMCIA development board for retro-computing enthusiasts
#12Awesome !!
I have an old Thinkpad and had a similar idea for wifi, but I was thinking about MiniPCI.
Emulating NE2000 is great :)
Re: PicoPCMCIA – a PCMCIA development board for retro-computing enthusiasts
#13TIL the Newton had a PCMCIA slot!
Re: PicoPCMCIA – a PCMCIA development board for retro-computing enthusiasts
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding (probably wrong) is that pcmcia was based off the ISA bus and then pc card updated to pci based and express card was pcie
Close! The PC Card rename was because people were confusing the name of the association with the specific form factor. PCMCIA and PC Card = ISA CardBus = PCI and ISA - slot was backwards compatible so you could use a PC Card in a CardBus slot ExpressCard = PCIe
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Re: PicoPCMCIA – a PCMCIA development board for retro-computing enthusiasts
#15TIL the Newton had a PCMCIA slot!
The Newtons from the OMP to the 130 had a single PCMCIA slot. The MP2000 and 2100 had two slots.
Re: PicoPCMCIA – a PCMCIA development board for retro-computing enthusiasts
#16I had a small bugfix in a PCMCIA driver for the Linux kernel, and I was thinking the other day that nobody uses it any more. But I guess they still are!
Re: PicoPCMCIA – a PCMCIA development board for retro-computing enthusiasts
#17And it'll be open sourced once everything is done!
Re: PicoPCMCIA – a PCMCIA development board for retro-computing enthusiasts
#18this looks sick as hell. i wonder whether there are viable NE2000 drivers for PowerBooks running classic Mac OS? modern WiFi (even limited by PCMCIA) might be preferable to era-appropriate WiFi. not much you can get an Orinoco card to talk to these days if you can even find one.
Look for Asante FriendlyNet drivers perhaps -- these were Mac OS 7.5+ compatible NE2000 cards.
Re: PicoPCMCIA – a PCMCIA development board for retro-computing enthusiasts
#19The RP2XXX microcontrollers are so incredible in terms of what it's opened to hobbyists. I hope microcontroller-based computers become a thing.
Agreed. The price point and PIOs really open a lot of possibilities, especially with the amazing tooling that is available.
Re: PicoPCMCIA – a PCMCIA development board for retro-computing enthusiasts
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding (probably wrong) is that pcmcia was based off the ISA bus and then pc card updated to pci based and express card was pcie
Close! The PC Card rename was because people were confusing the name of the association with the specific form factor. PCMCIA and PC Card = ISA CardBus = PCI and ISA - slot was backwards compatible so you could use a PC Card in a CardBus slot ExpressCard = PCIe
Ah, completely forgot about CardBus. That was a fun time when we also had NuBus kicking around on some older Macs, too.