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Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

tomc1985

I always liked PCMCIA slots -- you could add a whole bunch of different features to your machine in a fairly compact format. It's sad that laptops ditched them so long ago

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They just went smaller - Thunderbolt implements PCIe [1] under the hood. You can connect graphics cards over TB, for example.

[1] It actually implements three protocols that it can switch between based on endpoint negotiation - PCIe, DisplayPort, and in its latest version USB 3.1.

Only problem with Thunderbolt is that it's not an open standard.

It is now! Intel released the rights to USB-IF earlier this year, and it will be the basis of USB4: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/thunderbolt-3-become...

I had that Apple powerbook G3 that had two hot swap bays for batteries/hard drives/media players AND a PCMCIA slot. Oh, and built-in ethernet. I remember adding Firewire support via PCMCIA. Good times.

As far as I know the only type still in common use is CableCard, which I believe your cable company is legally obliged to support, and enables things like Tivo and HDHomeRun to work.

I still pay Spectrum $2.50 a month for a CableCARD in my ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner that powers my HTPC setup running Windows 8 Media Center

Honestly, I have always enjoyed just saying the acronym “PCMCIA”. It has a nice rhythm: “PCM.... CIA”

But the problem was that People Couldn't Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms.

I had an Orinico Gold WiFi card in my PCMCIA expansion pack for a Compaq Ipaq PDA back in the early 2000s. It was awesome!

I have a fond memory of my older brother buying an Orinoco card and putting it in his laptop and then us cruising around town wardriving back in the day

What does wardriving mean?

Wardriving was driving around town with a laptop scanning for WiFi access points without any encryption. Most wardrivers would have a GPS card and software that’d build a map up as you drive of all SSIDs and locations, which could be uploaded and contributed to by others.

This was back before ubiquitous open WiFi and encryption.

Slight amendment.

The heyday of wardriving (IMHO) was before the industry got its shit together with WPA.

Because before WPA, there was WEP. Which it turns out had multiple vulnerabilities, given enough traffic.

https://www.dummies.com/programming/networking/understanding...

Ergo, there was a period from ~1999-2004 whereby one could aim a Pringles cantenna at a neighbor's AP and crack their WEP password in order-of-an-evening (depending on how much traffic they were generating).

Not that I ever did such a thing, mind you.

Used it for that too! https://i.imgur.com/omNpSPr.jpg

They’re great cards and easy to write drivers for. I still use one in one of my thinkpads for wireless because it used to be the only card supported by 9front and plan 9 back in the day.

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