The Complete and Utter Guide to PC Cards and Expansion Bays on the PowerBook Part 1: PCMCIA and CardBus Cards by Remy Davison Peering at that empty CardBus or PCMCIA slot on your PowerBook and wondering what to do with it? Worry no more, because here at IGM, we're here to help. Welcome to the first installment in the Complete & Utter series. I've decided to mash PC cards and expansion bays together before some other bastard stole the idea. (before you complain, note this is a term of endearment in Australia). Here's the heads-up on what's available for your old 5300 or new Titanium. SCSI, FireWire, USB, CDRW - you name it, we got it covered. Who Left the Media Bay Out Who Who Who Who? Apple did. On the Titanium G4 to be precise. Oh, and the iBook. So. Which PowerBooks do have PC/CardBus slots and expansion bays? Card slots PCMCIA CardBus compliant Removable media bay Zip drive (100/250MB) SuperDisk (3.5" floppy/120MB) Expansion bay hard drive CDRW 3.5" Floppy Power supply 2nd battery PCMCIA Zoomed video CD/DVD Requires 10/100bT Ethernet 500 2 Yes - optional (removable) No No No No No No Yes (std.) No No No No 10b2/10bT not required 190 (3) 2 Yes No Yes 100 No Yes No Yes (std.) Yes No No No 10bT 5300 (3) 2 Yes No Yes 100 No Yes No Yes (std.) Yes No No No 10bT 1400 2 Yes No Yes 100 No No No Yes (std.) No Yes No Opt/Std CD depending on model 10bT 2400 2 Yes With caveats (1) (2) No No No No No External (std.) No No Lower slot No 10bT (100?bT?) 3400 (3) 2 Yes With caveats (1) Yes Yes No Yes No Yes (std.) Yes No Lower slot CD 100bT? G3 (Kanga) (3) 2 Yes With caveats (1) Yes Yes No Yes No Yes (std.) Yes No Lower slot CD 100bT? G3 Wallstreet 2 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes (opt.) No Yes Lower slot CD (DVD optional) 100bT G3 Lombard (4) 1 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes CD-ROM (333); DVD (400) Not required G3 Pismo (4) 1 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes DVD Not required G4 1 Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Yes DVD Not required iBook (original) 0 NA NA No No No No No No No No No CD Std. DVD std on 466 SE model Not required iBook 2001 0 NA NA No No No No Optional (built-in) on certain models No No No No CD Std. DVD, CDRW or DVD/CDRW depending on model Not required 1. All PCMCIA cards will work. Certain CardBus cards are known to work, for example, ADS, Belkin and Macally USB cards. Note that CardBus cards may fit very tightly. FireWire cards are unlikely to fit at all. The controller on the 2400/3400/Kanga is a CardBus-compliant Texas Instruments part. MCE will swap over the original cage for a CardBus-compliant cage for $99. I have not seen any reports of a 100bT or Wide/Ultra SCSI card used in the 2400/3400/Kanga. Contact us if you've tried this. 2. The Japan-only 2400/240MHz has a fully-CardBus-compliant cage. FireWire cards will work with this model, although DV and analog capture frame rates may be reduced to 15fps due to limitations of the hardware. 3. Can use same media bay modules, LiION batteries and CD ROM units cannot be used in 190/5300. 4. Media bay modules are entirely interchangeable. Nore that use of a DVD-ROM unit in Lombard 333 will not read DVDs (Video) without a hardware MPEG-2 decoder in CardBus slot. DVD unit in Lombard 333 without decoder will read CD-ROM/CDR/CDRW/VideoCD etc. So what is this PCMCIA doo-dad, anyway? Good question. Glad to see we're paying attention. PCMCIA is the original PC card specification which connects to the system bus via a 16-bit bus connector. The standard was generally adopted across the Intel world by around 1993. In 1994, Apple incorporated it into the PowerBook 500 series as an optional add-on. In fact, Apple went one better; the interface on the 500 was a Processor Direct Slot (PDS), which was connected directly to the 32-bit system bus. While this doesn't make it CardBus (we'll get onto this soon), it does mean that PC card performance on a PowerBook 500 series should be slightly better than on a PowerBook 190, 5300 or 1400. Apple standardized PCMCIA slots with the 1995 release of the PowerBook 190 and 5300 series. But what Apple giveth, Apple taketh away; the built-in Ethernet on your PowerBook 500 was gone, as was the internal modem. To fill the void, you had to purchase these as extra-cost options. Bad for the consumer. But on the up side, it opened up more options and better third-party support. Okay. So what's CardBus? Still awake? Good. Apple sort of played hokey-pokey with this one. Close reading of the developer documentation on the PowerBook 3400 and 2400 (1997) revealed that the so-called PCMCIA controller was a Texas Instruments part with CardBus support. So far, so good. There's more: the 3400 (introduced prior to the 2400) also offered Zoomed Video support in the lower slot, something all PowerBooks since (but not iBooks, obviously) have continued with. Zoomed Video lets you input video to your PowerBook and display it directly to the internal display, or attached external display (or both at once). But back to CardBus. A vast improvement on the original PCMCIA specification, CardBus is 32-bits wide, permitting much greater and faster data throughput (think of it as a two-lane highway merging into a four-lane; more traffic can get through at once, right?). The upshot of all this was bigger, stronger, faster cards could get data through to the PowerBook's CPU (and out again), thus providing a much wider range of connectivity and storage options. Naturally, Apple had to completely rejig the hardware to accommodate such feats of strength; this is why the PowerBook 3400 was such a break with older PowerBooks. Up to and including the 1400, PowerBooks were based on NuBus (essentially Duo '030) architecture. The 3400 changed all that; Apple took Intel's Peripheral Connector Interface (PCI) bus architecture and implemented in the PowerBooks, just as they had done with the second-generation desktop Power Macs (7500, 8500, 9500). On the CardBus side, this meant a card could now be connected to a 33MHz (versus 10MHz on the old NuBus) port. But PCI also meant that the whole Mac zipped along at a much greater pace. PCI provided support for Direct Memory Access (DMA) for the internal IDE hard drives, media bay devices (CD, DVD, CDRW, hard drives, Zips and SuperDisks) and anything else on the bus (like video cards - your ATI controller on the PowerBook G3 Series and later is mounted on the PCI bus. Good, hey? DMA means, essentially, that the component or peripheral has direct access to memory (RAM) and can by-pass the system bus and CPU entirely in order to access data. This not only takes pressure off your CPU, it also means information arrives and departs much more quickly. Support for the Intel standard (as later occurred with Intel's USB 1.1) meant more cards would be available for the Mac. In many cases, no specific driver was needed, so long as support was available in the OS. In other instances, only a Mac driver needed to be written. Of course, with OS X, card manufacturers are going to have to decide whether they're going to shift the product over to OS X. What's Available Modems Virtually anything will work - 14.4K, 56K. Any brand. So long as it's not a WinModem, which are comparatively rare now. These write to hardware. If it's a 28.8K that's flash-upgradeable to 33.6K and there's only a PC flash utility, flash it on a Wintel laptop. Ditto for 56K Flex to V90. There are now also V92 modems which permit 56kbps uploads, although I've tested none. PowerBook 500, 190, 5300 and 1400s will not get full benefit from a 56K modem due to limitations of the serial controller. An interesting one from Teleadapt USA is the Digicom Palladio V.90 Twin 56 MAC GSM Fax/Modem PC Card Modem for PowerBooks ($289). Supports Open Transport, PPP and so on. Works with Ericssen, Nokia, NEC and Siemens cell phones. ...and an interesting one for PowerBook 100/Duo/500 series without-PCMCIA-case owners Teleadapt also market the Modulette, an external PC card adpater for any Type II card (modem, ethernet). Battery-powered, connects to your serial port and comes with both Mac and PC connection cables. Take a deep breath before you see the price: $295. Exhale. Feel better? Ethernet Two categories here: 10bT/10b2 and 10bT/100bTX. All require a Mac driver to work. The Farallon, 3Com, Dayna and Global Village (GV) are all 10bT cards. Most have combo 10b2/bT dongles. Get a combo one in case you ever come across a 10b2 network. Dayna's out of business and GV don't make theirs anymore. Used Dayna Communicards are a good buy. Intel have the drivers somewhere, but you'll find them on-line easily enough. Use v.1.2.2e, rather than 2.3. Farallon still make their card and actively support its driver software. GVs also come as modem/ethernet combo cards and these still fetch a reasonable price on ebay. Download v. 3.0.2 of the GV software for these (it's a full install). 3Com has Mac drivers. Don't buy a Xircom combo card and expect it to work. The modem side will; the ethernet side won't. Some people have been able to work out which chipset a given PC ethernet card uses and they use a complementary driver. However, YMMV. Farallon and MacSense make 10/100bT cards which will work with the Wallstreet. They may work with the 2400/3400/Kanga. SCSI The main entry here is Adaptec's SlimSCSI CardBus card. There are two models: one gives you Wide SCSI (68-pin) and the other gives you Ultra-Wide (UW) SCSI (80 pin). However, even if you have a Wallstreet or Lombard, you'll get much better performance from SCSI-2 peripherals. Pismo and G4 owners will also be able to utilise their legacy SCSI equipment. Prices start at around $150. Again, it may be possible to deploy these cards in 2400/3400/Kanga models, although they require CardBus. Note that SCSI devices attached via SlimSCSI are not bootable as the card is driver-extension controlled. FireWire Dozens of choices here. The good news is that most, if not all, also work with PC notebooks, so you can swap or share. The cheapest is Newer's FireWire2Go ($34) because they're out of business (comes with QuickTime Pro 4.0). Smalldog will honor a 180-day warranty on their FW2Go cards. Most cards, happily, are now well under $100. Ratoc's card has dual FireWire ports and a dongle for connecting AC power, so you don't need to plug one into the drive itself. Other card vendors include Macally and VST. Note that no CardBus FW card will supply power to an external device. Other hardware limitations include no bootability from a FW hard drive or CDRW and no ability to do FireWire Target Mode. But then again, the right FW card on a Wallstreet will do faster disc transfers than built-in FW on a Titanium (according to Bare Feats claims). FW cards will also let you hook up to most DV cameras, scanners, webcams, CDRWs and Jazes/Orbs on the market. Look for card vendors who have already committed to OS X if you're planning on running it on your older PowerBook. IDE MCE offer a mobile/portable storage solution for 2.5" hard drives. The kit comprises an enclosure and a PCMCIA card. You can slot in your own 2.5" drive or buy it with a hard disc preinstalled. The drive then connects to your 'Book via the PC card. USB 1.1/2.0 Again, quite a few choices here. Like FW cards, you'll find USB cards priced well below $100. All I've encountered give you two ports. ADS, Belkin and Macally cards have been proven to work on the PowerBook 2400/3400/Kanga. These cards require a hacked Apple USB card support installer, which you can download. Generously provided by Rob Frohro at his excellent 3400 site. Read it carefully. Other brands of USB cards may work. Of course, with the Wallstreet, USB cards work out of the box. As the table above notes, you cannot use USB in any way, shape or form on the pre-3400 PowerBooks. Sorry. There are no Mac-compatible CardBus USB 2.0 cards shipping at present that I'm aware of. There are desktop PCI cards. I suspect one will become available depending on the popularity of peripherals sporting USB 2.0. Given the popularity of FireWire, and the fact that there's little or no benefit in putting USB 2.0 on consumer-spec scanners and printers. Any CardBus USB 2.0 card will require Mac OS drivers. Wireless LAN Again, a reasonably wide choice. Lucent, maker of Apple's own Airport card, make three (Orinoco silver, gold and platinum). About $129 for the Silver. Farallon also make an 11Mbps wireless card. You may also find Farallon's earlier 4Mbps card fairly cheaply. The good news is that these cards work with all PC card slot equipped PowerBooks. Yes, even your ancient 520 or 190 can hook up to an Airport network. The Farallon and Lucent cards also work out of the box with Apple's Airport Base Station software. Even if you own a Titanium, it may be worthwhile considering an external (PC) card if higher-quality reception is important to you (TiBooks' aerials are internal and the signals do not travel well through Titanium). Video out/Second Monitor Two products springs to mind: one is the no-longer made ixMicro RoadRocket video card which was designed to give the Wallstreets better video out capabilities to expanded desktop (dual monitors). I'm not aware of anyone trying one of these in an earlier 603e PCI PowerBook. MARGI Systems also produces a CardBus Display-to-Go card which works in the PowerBook G3 Series and (presumably) the PowerBook G4. This card allows users to connect to a VGA or DVI monitor. It's unclear whether a DVI-to-ADC adaptor would allow a PowerBook access to Apple's LCD displays with an ADC connection. The retail price for Display-to-Go is $299. Zoomed Video The 3400 and all models since have supported Zoomed Video. In the dual-PC slot models (3400/2400/Kanga/Wallstreet), these go in the lower slot. Zoomed video takes an image from another source (analog video camera, S-video device, VCR) and displays the picture on your PowerBook screen. At full resolution (the AV Quadra/Centris could do something similar). Independent of the CPU, zoomed video means you can still watch TV even if your PowerBook has crashed. There are TV tuner PC cards in the Wintel world, but unfortunately a Mac driver hasn't been written. (There's eskape labs' MyTV USB if you want it). The closest you'll get in a PC card ( (if attached to a VCR) is iRez's Capsure. The card feature 2 MJPEG compressors with 32MB RAM on board. This is sufficient to display 1024x768 resolution on a 13.3" or better screen. The Capsure is mainly designed to capture movies from analog sources. Using Component Video or Motion JPEG-A compression, you'll be able to capture 640x480 movies without problems on a Wallstreet (233/512K) or later at 25 or 29fps. The earlier PowerBooks (3400) are limited by hardware and will only be able to capture consistently at around 15fps at 384x288 (standard QuickTime movie size). The good thing is that the Capsure works with Premiere 6.0 and Final Cut Pro (1.2.5; haven't tried 2.0), although not with iMovie (FireWire only). For more on doing video capture with a PowerBook, see this article. You'll find the Capsure for $99 or less. Compact Flash/CF Type II/Smart Media My favorite. Type I CF cards are the kind you find in digital cameras. Type II are PCMCIA cards (more expensive). Size aside, they're the same. Available in capacities up to 512MB. My advice is to buy the Type Is and buy a $5 PCMCIA adaptor to slot it into your PowerBook. CF cards are bootable on the PB 500 series up to and including the Wallstreets. On a Lombard or later, use them to back up critical data. A 32MB card is $30-40. Much faster than a Zip and much more reliable. Use them to instantly swap data with other PowerBooks or PC notebooks. iBooks and other USB Macs can use them too, via a USB CF card reader. Smart Media do the same thing as CF, only it's a different card and also requires a PCMCIA adaptor. CF cards, you'll generally find, are cheaper. DVD Available for Wallstreet and Lombard. The Apple (Wallstreet) or VST kit comprises the DVD-ROM drive plus the PCMCIA decoder card. Works on any Wallstreet, 12.1" screen or whatever. Also works in the Lombard 333. You can use a Lombard/Pismo DVD drive with the PCMCIA decoder. VST, under license, will not sell components separately. The bonus on the Wallstreet is you'll also be able to read CDRWs. Magma PCI Not for the faint at heart. The Magma connects to your PowerBook's PCI host controller via the CardBus slot on the Wallstreets and later. Then you connect up to a box with one or more full-sized PCI slots. Has its own power supply. Video cards, sound cards - the sky's the limit. Well - your budget's the limit. But it's a lot more convenient that buying an extra B&W G3 or G4 simply to have access to PCI cards. You only need one Mac, anyway (and the Magma only goes to show that there isn't anything you can do on a desktop that you can't do on a PowerBook). Try not eating for a month before you buy it though. Pocket Zip PC Card (How to lose customers and annoy people) Major complaint time. Iomega, in their wisdom, have not written a Mac driver for the Pocket Zip PC card. Oh sure, you can use their card drive adaptor. But not the cards themselves which, at 40MB and $10 each, should be a viable competitor to CF cards. Write to them and complain. Loudly. Threaten to invite national press to your place to watch you burn all your Iomega drives on the front lawn. Who bought all those SCSI Zip drives anyway? Just don't buy their stupid Peerless drives and CDRWs by way of protest - until they fix this monumental screw-up and apologize. What else? You might say, "Hey. I own a wintel box too. How can I use PC cards with them?" You can, actually. Don't have the link handy now, but there are PCI and ISA cards which have a PCMCIA or CardBus slot which allows them to share PC cards. Pretty inexpensive if I recall correctly. If you need to share cards (for example, Compact Flash or Smart Media) with an iMac or desktop Power Mac, invest in one of the many card readers on the market - some read both CF and Smart Media, and more recent ones include provision for Sony's Memory Stick. Beige Power Mac or 68K owners can use their serial port and buy the Modulette mentioned above, if they want to maximise the use of their PC cards. For 68K users, this may be the only option; for PCI desktops, cheap USB, FireWire and ethernet cards are a more reasonable solution. Next: Part 2: PowerBook Expansion Bay Modules.