PC Card ("PCMCIA") to USB 3.0 adapter - recommendations?

[MX-16_fan]

@all:

I am currently retrofitting two old notebooks, and want to get USB 3.0 into them via 32-Bit slot-in PC Cards ("PCMCIA"). As you know, many old notebooks are still pretty good for AntiX and MX Linux, but many of them come with USB 1.1 only, and additionally often with one USB slot only.

There are a number of USB 2.0 PC Cards on the market, but that would slightly stay behind the capabilities of many old notebooks. That's why I am looking for an USB 3.0 adapter.

Has any one of you seen anything like that on the market? I searched in quite a few professional industry hardware shops (those people usually offer a lot of retrofitting stuff that's compatible with outdated standards), but I couldn't find anything.

I'd greatly appreciate any hint .


Greetings, and a nice week to all of you, Joe

[dolphin_oracle]

I would be surprised if you find one. IIRC, the speed of a USB3 port is far faster than the pcmcia standard. and the pcmcia standard is much older than the usb3 standard.

actually, IIRC, usb2.0 data transfer is actually faster than the PCMCIA standard. While a USB2 might make sense from a peripheral stand point, there is literally no reason for a usb 3 port where the primary benefit is in usb3 storage devices.

[MX-16_fan]

@dolphin_oracle:

I would be surprised if you find one. IIRC, the speed of a USB3 port is far faster than the pcmcia standard. and the pcmcia standard is much older than the usb3 standard.

actually, IIRC, usb2.0 data transfer is actually faster than the PCMCIA standard. While a USB2 might make sense from a peripheral stand point, there is literally no reason for a usb 3 port where the primary benefit is in usb3 storage devices.

Are you shure?

* USB 2.0 "effective throughput of the High Speed signaling rate is limited to ... 35 MB/s" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#2.0).

* "CardBus are PCMCIA 5.0 or later ..., ... present in laptops from late 1997 onward. (...) The speed of CardBus interfaces in 32-bit burst mode depends on the transfer type: in byte mode, transfer is 33 MB/s; in word mode it is 66 MB/s; and in dword (double-word) mode 132 MB/s.

* USB 3.0 seems to be capable of transferring up to 625 MB/s. In any case more than USB 2.0 IMHO.


Greetings, and have a nice week, Joe

[MX-16_fan]

@dolphin_oracle:

I would be surprised if you find one.

I had the chance of testing a friend's USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter (https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters ... CUSB3S254F). While the adapter itself is superb, I noticed what seems to be one general major disadvantage of the ExpressCard standard in comparison with the older PC Card standard: ExpressCard seems to offer little protection against accidential ejection of the card. E.g. when I had a USB adapter plugged in, I only had to slightly accidentially touch it, and the whole card was instantly ejected (while in use!). Who creates standards like this? I really don't understand it.


Greetings, and have a great week, Joe

[rokytnji.1]

Owning a IBM T23 and a Pansonic CF-48. I'd also be surprised if the motherboard will accept usb 3.0. From pmcia or even a usb dongle. Being usb 1.1 based.
My IBM T23 thread

Express cards are newer technology hardware interface that may or may not connect correctly on my laptops listed above. I don't know . Not owning express cards but I do own a few older pcmcia card buses.

Example:

Did not work for my laptop

I should of bought the full wide version as this one does not engage in the slot as it should. I'm it would of worked fine however. Just not on my older HP 6510B Laptop.

Sorry. I know of no pcmcia cards of that type you are looking for. But maybe? https://www.ebay.com/itm/SODIAL-R-3-Por ... 2241748389 or maybe? https://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-3-0-2-Port ... 0005.m1851

Edit: might wanna search out for the above : Chipset: Renesas USB 3.0 extensible host controller.
What I roll with are 2 cheap via chip chinese 4 port, 2usb/2firewire ports , pcmcia card that mounts sutomagically in roxfm and spacefm in my antix installs.

To be honest IMO.

transferring up to 625 MB/s.

On my old laptops. Even with a Pata SSD hard drive.

[rokytnji.1]

Based on your thread. I pulled the trigger and boughtthis one for my

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$ inxi -M
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Dell product: Latitude E4310 v: 0001 serial: N/A
           Mobo: Dell model: 0T6M8G v: A01 serial: N/A
           BIOS: Dell v: A03 date: 07/08/2010

Laptop running

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$ inxi -S
System:    Host: biker Kernel: 4.14.12-antix.1-amd64-smp x86_64 bits: 64
           Desktop: IceWM 1.4.2 Distro: antiX-17_x64-full Heather Heyer 24 October 2017

This is newer hardware/motherboard though. But no usb 3.0 ports. So I figured. What the hell.

It will probably be hit or miss as far as working with this kernel. May require a little elbow grease on my part.

[rokytnji.1]

To follow up on my post above. The express card usb 3.0 came in and I put it in this slot

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$ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: biker Kernel: 4.9.79-antix.1-686-smp-pae i686 bits: 32 gcc: 4.9.2
           Desktop: IceWM 1.3.8 Distro: antiX-15-V_386-full Killah P 30 June 2015
Machine:   Device: laptop System: LENOVO product: 2347DS2 v: ThinkPad T430 serial: N/A
           Mobo: LENOVO model: 2347DS2 serial: N/A
           UEFI [Legacy]: LENOVO v: G1ET41WW (1.16 ) date: 05/25/2012
Battery    BAT0: charge: 21.7 Wh 99.6% condition: 21.8/56.2 Wh (39%)
           model: SANYO 45N1001 status: Charging
CPU:       Dual core Intel Core i5-3320M (-MT-MCP-) arch: Ivy Bridge rev.9 cache: 3072 KB
           flags: (lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 10375
           clock speeds: max: 3300 MHz 1: 1608 MHz 2: 1330 MHz 3: 1412 MHz 4: 1294 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 drivers: intel (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1600x900@60.01hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile x86/MMX/SSE2
           version: 3.3 Mesa 10.3.2 Direct Render: Yes
Audio:     Card Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Def. Audio Controller
           driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.9.79-antix.1-686-smp-pae
Network:   Card-1: Intel 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
           driver: e1000e v: 3.2.6-k port: 5080 bus-ID: 00:19.0
           IF: eth2 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 [Taylor Peak] driver: iwlwifi bus-ID: 03:00.0
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 322.1GB (24.6% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: HGST_HTS545032A7 size: 320.1GB
           ID-2: USB /dev/sdb model: U3_Cruzer_Micro size: 2.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 7.6G used: 5.8G (80%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
           ID-2: /home size: 68G used: 3.1G (5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 4.19GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 44.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 3216
Info:      Processes: 178 Uptime: 47 min Memory: 367.6/15936.6MB
           Init: SysVinit runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 4.9.2 Client: Shell (bash 4.3.301) inxi: 2.3.54 

It auto mounted my usb drive OK when I plugged it in

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$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0781:5406 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer Micro U3
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 5986:02d5 Acer, Inc 
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

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$ lsusb -t
/:  Bus 06.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/2p, 5000M
/:  Bus 05.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/2p, 480M
/:  Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/4p, 5000M
/:  Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/4p, 480M
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/3p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/8p, 480M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/3p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/6p, 480M
        |__ Port 6: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
        |__ Port 6: Dev 3, If 1, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M

ANYBODY buying and the same card and doing what I did better pay attention to the kernel I am running and posting .
It might work in 4.14 or whatever. It did not work on my AntiX 4.10.1 .i686 kernel though.
This is a later model laptop with a express card slot. I now have extra usb 3.0 ports in my AntiX 15 installation.

[MX-16_fan]

@dolphin_oracle:

I would be surprised if you find one. (...)

Apparently you were right. Even after in-depth research, I haven't been able to find any PC-Card-to-USB-3.0 adapter on the market.

I'll leave this thread as it is, just in case (however unlikely) someone happens to bring that kind of adapter to the market, and someone else discovers it.



Greetings, and thanks, Joe

[DellPater]

Hello...as per myknowledge the speed of a USB3 port is far faster than the pcmcia standard, andthe pcmcia standard is much older than the usb3 standard. And this speed is because of mainly of these components in PCMCIA. It has very old style of PCB design which is not suitable for high data transfer speed.
IIRC, usb2.0 data transfer is actually faster thanthe PCMCIA standard. While a USB2 might make sense from a peripheral standpoint, there is literally no reason for a usb 3 port where the primary benefitis in usb3 storage devices.

[MX-16_fan]

@DellPater:

Hello...as per my knowledge the speed of a USB3 port is far faster than the pcmcia standard. (...) IIRC, usb2.0 data transfer is actually faster than the PCMCIA standard. (...)

Please cf. viewtopic.php?p=426202#p426202:

• USB 2.0 "effective throughput of the High Speed signaling rate is limited to ... 35 MB/s" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#2.0).
• CardBus (PCMCIA 5.0) or later speed: 66 MB/s in word mode, 132 MB/s in double-word mode.

Means that PCMCIA-to-USB adapters could provide way faster USB speed than USB 2.0.


Please correct me if I'm wrong.


Greetings, Joe