PCMCIA CD-ROM troubles - PC Card to CardBus adapter? \ VOGONS

PCMCIA CD-ROM troubles - PC Card to CardBus adapter?

Topic actions

Post a reply

First post, by Kurasiu

Posted on 2017-02-24, 14:24

Kurasiu Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 71
Joined: 2013-03-16, 23:34
Location: Poland

Recently I acquired an old Siemens Nixdorf Scenic Mobile 500 notebook, which works like a charm, but features no optical drive (floppy drive only). Figured I might pick up a PCMCIA CD-ROM someday, and had luck, as a local computer shop was selling an old CD-ROM PCMCIA drive for a great price (exactly this one)

I picked it up, ran home and whoops, turns out the it has a PC Card 5V connector, while my Scenic 500 features CardBus 3.3V slots only. Mea culpa, as I should've obviously double-checked the connector, but nevertheless - is there any kind of adapter, which will let me connect a PC Card to a CardBus slot? Or somehow connect the CD-ROM to the parallel port? The CD-ROM features a weird, 26-pin d-sub like connector, never seen one like this:

Can anything be done with it?

Reply 1 of 3, by kenrouholo

Posted on 2017-02-24, 15:40

kenrouholo Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 211
Joined: 2017-02-06, 20:58

CardBus is based on PCI and PCMCIA is based on ISA. I'm not sure if you've mixed up terms in your post (people did commonly call Cardbus cards PCMCIA which always was rather annoyingly confusing), or if you've got 2 completely different generations of tech that can't work together.

I've also never seen that connector but if you want to look up info call it "HD26." D-sub connectors with 3 rows are called HD[number of pins]. (I'm not an expert on laptop hardware)

Yes, I always ramble this much.

Reply 2 of 3, by lolo799

Posted on 2017-02-24, 23:28

lolo799 Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1114
Joined: 2011-04-26, 17:51

Cardbus slots are backwards compatible with legacy PCMCIA cards, if the card fits, it should work.

PCMCIA Sound, Storage & Graphics

Reply 3 of 3, by xplus93

Posted on 2017-02-25, 02:13

xplus93 Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 561
Joined: 2016-12-25, 22:56

I'd agree with lolo799. Luckily MOST (not all) manufacturers back then were aware of how quickly interfaces were changing and made sure to key cards and connectors to ensure nothing got damaged. (Last thing they want is a lawsuit) So, plug it in and give it a spin. (pun intended)

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to General Old Hardware

Main menu

Common searches