XJACK PC Card Ethernet Connector

en.wikipedia.org

13 points·transpute··6 comments

PCMCIA cards were cool. It's much nicer to have peripherals in the laptop.

Although my modem card didn't have this XJACK thing, it had a big chunky end that stuck out of the laptop to fit an RJ11.

As others have noted, the Xjack was neat, but a bit fragile. I really liked my Xircom Realport[0] card - it had durable Ethernet and modem jacks, but did take up two card slots. It was great for field work.

0 - https://ia802803.us.archive.org/22/items/xircomrealportcredi...

XJACK was great because then you didn't need a dongle, but my users kept breaking the XJACK. Super convenient but fragile.

Dongle sockets were pretty fragile too. I think the most robust were the cards where there was a regular sized jack at the end of the card, but those had to stick out from the end of the laptop, and if you had two stacked slots as was once common, you wouldn't be able to use two of those.

They had double-height PCMCIA cards without the pop-out that you could directly plug into. The Apple Newton was a PCMCIA device. It wouldn't take much for manufacturers to bring it back just by including it in a new design, but that would be too convenient, right?

What I've witnessed recently is that the kids really want their buttons and switches and are sick of janky digital UI. And get a load of Apple wowing everyone with a button on the new iPhone 16! What is old is new again.

I think it was nice for a modem using 2 wire very lightweight and flexible phone connector

Cat5 connector - too heavy and too easy to break the XJACK

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