I saw a PCMCIA IDE card at a flee market without the cable. That stopped me buying it because it’s unclear if I would be able to find the cable it needs. Obviously the drive end of the cable would be the 50-pin standard but what about the tiny connector that attaches to the PCMCIA card?
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I have no clue if that would be a standardised format cable, but I doubt it based on the experiences I’ve had with PC cards (interchangeability of dongles was almost never a thing)…
But dude… You have a PCMCIA capable computer?!? I havent seen one in probably a decade :)
My laptop is over 15 years old. I have an expresscard in it now (to get USB3). I think PCMCIA is compatible, correct? IIUC both PCMCIA and ExpressCard are 54mm wide, but the expresscard only uses half the pins.
Thats a question for someone else, I’ve never dealt with express card that I know of (military, so I may have and not known it, LOTS of laptops…).
Wiki kinda implies it should be ok though.
I’d use the USB3 card to interface with IDE though… That’s a much more straightforward approach :)
Yeah indeed a USB3→PATA and/or SATA cable was what I was actually looking for at the flee market - but only found the IDE card (which would also work for me if a cable were easy to come by)
Of course the IDE cable is standard across PCMCIA cards. The question is what is that slot also compatible with.
the greater question is why on earth you’re spending any amount of money on that ancient trash? a spinny drive from that era is almost certainly a ticking time-bomb. The bearings in those old IDE drives didn’t last long when they were new.
Cost might be negligible… probably $/€ 1-5 for the card and probably $/€ 1 for the cable if i find one. I’m happy with the 15 y.o. laptop. I think I’ll get at least another 5-10 years out of it. I’m not gaming or anything heavy, so I believe I will never again have to buy a PC or laptop. I keep finding functional PCs in the trash that are faster than what I need. I expect that pattern to continue as long as MS continues to bloat out Windows and leverage designed obsolescence against a majority of the population. Even LCDs and scanners I pull from the trash have no issues. I’ve accumulated HDDs from the trash that are useful for temporary operations, like having an extra backup or two while migrating to a new Debian release.
I just love the fact that I do not need to support bad players in the marketplace. I have never had to buy a post-2008 intel cpu or a post-2013 AMD CPU (which means I have never had to contribute to chip makers who produce anti-noncorp-consumer management engines). IIUC, the only modern spy-free chip is the ibm power11. If I ever see the day that I need to buy new gear it would have to be that. Not sure if they put the power11 in laptops yet, or if there will be a mobile variant.
That’s a very infantile and childish way to look at the computer industry as a whole.
It’s the other way around – childishly selfish to partake in reckless consumerism, buying goods needlessly with total disregard for ethics of the supply chains and ethics of excessive production and consequential waste. Naïve to then advocate for products that are actually anti-consumer. And disgusting to see someone encouraging others to behave like children in the same way while at the same time calling adults in the room “childish”. Shame on you.