PCMCIA General Information

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Industry Contacts

PCMCIA Headquarters
2635 North First Street, Suite 209
San Jose, CA 95134 USA
Tel (408) 433-CARD (2273)
Fax (408) 433-9558
BBS: (408) 433-2270
EMAIL: office@pcmcia.org
URL: http://www.pc-card.com

PCMCIA European Chapter
Avenue Marcel Thiry 204
B-1200 Brussels, Belgium
Tel +32 2-774-9620
Fax +32 2-774-9690

Andrew Prophet Research & Consulting (APR&C)
19672 Stevens Creek Blvd., Suite 175
Cupertino, CA 95014-2465
Phone: 408 253-6567
Fax: 408-253-8811
URL: http://www.apresearch.com
EMAIL: aprophet@apresearch.com

APR&C is a market research firm providing market reports on PCMCIA Cards.

Tell Me More About

CardBus
The PCMCIA used the PCI electrical specification as the basis of a 32-bit, high performance bus interface that utilizes the existing PCMCIA connector and form-factor. CardBus, or PC-Card 32, adds bus mastering and high-speed, 32-bit data transfer capabilities to PCMCIA.

Differences between CardBus and PCI are driven first by the PCMCIA mechanical environment, and next by the need to make CardBus sockets backward compatible with PCMCIA R2.x cards. PCI compliant devices are not automatically compliant with CardBus. The PCMCIA publishes the CardBus specification as part of the PC-Card standard.

More information on Xilinx and PCI.

DVB - Digital Video Broadcasting
The Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Project originated as a pan-European effort to develop the standards and equipment for deploying digital television in Europe. Today, efforts have expanded to include cable, satellite, terrestrial and interactive services.

Most of the services will have associated fees and will therefore require some form of encryption, or scrambling. DVB has defined a conditional access mechanism designed to allow customers access to only the services they have subscribed to. A Common Interface standard was developed as an option to allow the conditional access and descrambling functions to be physically separate from the receiver, or set-top box. The descrambler and its associated control functionality can then reside on an external module that communicates with the host over the Common Interface. The lowest, physical layer of this interface is based on a variant of the PC Card Standard.

DVB cards will operate as normal PC Cards in memory mode during initialization, after which they will be reconfigured for DVB operation. In order to keep set-top design simple, a DVB receiver should not need a PCMCIA controller IC. This differs somewhat from North American digital TV consortiums who have specified full PCMCIA capabilities in their set-top box specifications.

For more information on the DVB Common Interface specification, you can either contact the PCMCIA, or contact the following:

DVB Project Office
European Broadcasting Union
Case postale 67 - 17A Ancienne Route
CH-1218 GRAND-SACONNEX (Geneva)
Switzerland
Phone: +41 22 717 27 19
FAX: +41 22 717 27 27
EMAIL: dvb@ebu.ch

Zoom Video
The Zoom Video, or ZV Port proposal adds multimedia capabilities to the existing 16-bit PCMCIA bus, using the same mechanical connector and form factor. ZV creates an input only, dual-port graphics subsystem where one port handles graphics data, and the other handles video. The ZV Port provides a direct connection between the PC Card and video memory and up to 27 MBps bandwidth. By circumventing the system bus, it is unaffected by the congestion and latency problems associated with multiple PCI bus loads and CPU overhead encountered in a Pentium-class portable computer. PC Card Standard software will switch between normal 16-bit Memory Only mode and ZV Port mode.

The proposal is based on 16-bit PCMCIA V2.1 technology and is being positioned as a low-cost alternative to CardBus and PCI. ZV clock speed is 16 MHz, making it much easier to implement than a CardBus interface. Since video and audio data is transferred real-time, there is no need for data-buffering. This eliminates the need for bus mastering or bus arbitration logic on the PC-Card. A draft of the ZV Port specification is under review with the PCMCIA. For more information, contact the PCMCIA.

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