[Coco] CoCo emulation on a Compaq Internet Appliance?

[Joel Ewy]

Frank Swygert wrote:
> Sounds like a great idea -- if you guys get this running good I might
> have to go looking for one!
> There are PCMCIA hard drives available if you don't want to use a CF
> card and adapter. I found one reasonably priced, an 8.1 GB models
> here: http://www.kryptronic.com/demo/ccp0-prodshow/HDD1007.html. The
> pic is a PCMCIA SATA adapter, but description is for a hard drive.
>
One word of warning.  A lot of people use the terms PCMCIA and Cardbus
interchangeably, but they most definitely are not.  PCMCIA refers to the
older, 16-bit cards, while Cardbus is the proper term for the 32-bit
cards.  The physical interface is almost the same, and you can plug
PCMCIA cards into a Cardbus slot, but not the other way around.  I have
a number of old Compaq laptops (and others) that have the 16-bit PCMCIA
sockets, which won't work with Cardbus cards.  I was finally able to
find one model of 802.11b card that would work in the 16-bit slot, but
most of them that were available by the time I was in the market for
them were Cardbus.  There are lots of USB adapters for laptops, but
they're all 32-bit Cardbus, not 16-bit PCMCIA, so there's basically no
hope of adding USB to an older laptop that doesn't have it built-in.

Roger, given the age of the the Compaq Internet Appliance, make sure you
can find out whether the interface on it is PCMCIA or Cardbus -- you
won't be able to tell by looking at it -- before you plunk down money on
a piece of hardware you potentially cannot use.  The hard drive Frank
mentions above for instance, will only work in a 32-bit Cardbus slot. 
But all of the CF adapters I have seen are 16-bit PCMCIA, and they run
in the range of $10-$15.  Finally, you can tell the difference between
PCMCIA and Cardbus cards (not slots) at a glance, because the Cardbus
cards have a gold colored contact strip up near the front connector,
while the PCMCIA cards do not.  If you follow the link to the 8.1G hard
drive in Frank's message you can see this gold strip in the photo.

JCE
> Here's a link for a CF card adapter -- $50 w/a 2GB CF card isn't bad:
> http://www.bixnet.com/5gbpcmcihard.html
>
> Anyone remember California Digital? They have several PCMCIA storage
> cards. An interesting one is a battery powered S-RAM card -- 2MB for
> $59. http://www.cadigital.com/pcmcia.htm.
>
> Those guys must have had a boxcar load of Tano Dragons -- they STILL
> have them listed at $35 each!!
> http://www.cadigital.com/computer.htm.
>
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