In computing, PC Card (originally PCMCIA Card ) is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard (as well as its successor ExpressCard) was defined and developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) which itself was created by a number of computer industry companies in the United States to offer a standard for memory-expansion cards that would compete with the JEIDA memory card standard developed in Japan. It was invented by Jacob D. Holm in 1986, and in 1991 the two standards merged as JEIDA 4.1 or PCMCIA 2.0 (PC Card).
PC Card was originally designed for computer storage expansion, but the existence of a usable general standard for notebook peripherals led to many kinds of devices being made available in this form. Typical devices included network cards, modems, and hard disks. The cards were also used in early digital SLR cameras, such as the Kodak DCS 300 series. The original use, as storage expansion, is no longer common.
Many notebooks in the 1990s had two adjacent type-II slots, which allowed installation of two type-II cards or one, double-thickness, type-III card. The PC card port has been superseded by the faster ExpressCard interface, but some modern portable computers still use them. |