PCMCIA Miniature Card: Miniature Card is a smaller implementation of PCMCIA, developed around 1995.
The Miniature Cards dimensions: 3.5mm x 33mm x 38mm (Tall x Length x Width).
The electrical specifications are a subset of the PC Card standard, restricted to memory applications only.
Miniature Card uses a 16-bit data bus and a 24-bit address
bus to allow a single card to store up to 64MB.
Miniature Card is used as a memory-only expansion card or Linear Flash interface.
A Miniature Card Supports addressing up to 64M Bytes of Flash, DRAM [32M words], or ROM
memory and uses a 16-bit Non-multiplexed Data Bus.
Supplied power is either 5.0 or 3.3 volts. The table below shows the pin-out for a 60 pin
connector.
Pin | Signal name | Pin | Signal name |
1 | Address Line 18 | 31 | Address Line 19 |
2 | Address Line 16 | 32 | Address Line 17 |
3 | Address Line 14 | 33 | Address Line 15 |
4 | Memory Refresh Voltage | 34 | Address Line 13 |
5 | CEH# | 35 | Address Lin 12 |
6 | Address Line 11 | 36 | Reset# |
7 | Address Line 9 | 37 | Address Line 10 |
8 | Address Line 8 | 38 | VS1# [Voltage Sense] |
9 | Address Line 6 | 39 | Address Line 7 |
10 | Address Line 5 | 40 | BS8# |
11 | Address Line 3 | 41 | Address Line 4 |
12 | Address Line 2 | 42 | CEL# [Low Byte Enable] |
13 | Address Line 0 | 43 | Address Line 1 |
14 | RAS# [Row Strobe] | 44 | CASL# |
15 | Address Line 24 | 45 | CASH# |
16 | Address Line 23 | 46 | CD# [Card Detect] |
17 | Address Line 22 | 47 | Address Line 21 |
18 | OE# | 48 | BUSY# |
19 | Data Line 15 | 49 | WE# |
20 | Data Line 13 | 50 | Data Line 14 |
21 | Data Line 12 | 51 | Reserved |
22 | Data Line 10 | 52 | Data Line 11 |
23 | Data Line 9 | 53 | VS2# [Voltage Sense 2] |
24 | Data Line 0 | 54 | Data Line 8 |
25 | Data Line 2 | 55 | Data Line 1 |
26 | Data Line 4 | 56 | Data Line 3 |
27 | Reserved | 57 | Data Line 5 |
28 | Data Line 7 | 58 | Data Line 6 |
29 | Serial Data/Address | 59 | Reserved |
30 | Serial Clock | 60 | Address Line 20 |
Implementation Warning;
Like the original PCMCIA specification, the Miniature Card variant is obsolete.
This particular PC Card implementation uses a 16 bit data bus and was replaced by the 32 bit Card Bus a number of years ago.
However even the 32 bit version of the standard was rendered out-dated with the release of Express Card, which moved to the PCI-Express Bus.
The pin out for the Miniature Card shown above is still valid, although the odds of finding a card are diminishing.
The transfer speed, number of data bits and limited amount of address space also limits the cards current usage as memory expansion.
This interface should not be used in any new design. This is basically old technology based on an out dated electrical interface.
The electrical interface being used on a Miniature Card is based of the old ISA bus which was replaced by the PCI bus 20 years ago.
Upgrade Advice: Any new memory card could out perform the Miniature Card. However the assumption would be a new computer would be needed.
After several years the odds begin to increase that an old computer will fail, for any number of reasons.
So the first step in up-grading would be to trade up to a newer computer that has the capability and card slots to read a newer memory card.
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