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Using PCMCIA cards in DOS, via PCI adaptor card...?

DeathAdderSF

DeathAdderSF

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Hello.

I would like to add PCMCIA card support to my desktop, via a PCI adaptor card. However it's only useful for me if the cards can be accessed in plain ol' DOS 6.22 (with no version of Windows installed). If anyone has experience with this, please recommend the PCI adaptor brand name, part #, etc., and point me in the right direction of any drivers or special software you had to install.

Thanks in advance,
 
DeathAdderSF said:
Hello.

I would like to add PCMCIA card support to my desktop, via a PCI adaptor card. However it's only useful for me if the cards can be accessed in plain ol' DOS 6.22 (with no version of Windows installed). If anyone has experience with this, please recommend the PCI adaptor brand name, part #, etc., and point me in the right direction of any drivers or special software you had to install.

Thanks in advance,
Click to expand...

You can certainly add the adapter to your PC, but what kind of PCMCIA cards are you thinking about. So, if I understand this, you have a PCMCIA adapter that you're going to install in a PCI slot? Most PCMCIA cards that I'm familiar with are like modems, SCSI adapters, network cards and such. Isn't that kind of taking the long way around. I would be concerned about driver availability. I do have a a SCSI PCMCIA card from an old JAZ HD setup that would load with DOS.
 
Stone said:
No, he doesn't, that's why he asked for a recommendation.
Click to expand...

It's the idea of the whole thing that I'm questioning. What kind of a PCMCIA card would you stick in PCI slot adapter that isn't already available in true PCI form? As a project I supposed it's okay, but it doesn't seem very 'tidy'.
 
You'll need a version of Cardsoft for DOS that can work with the PCI adaptor card, or a card that supplies its own DOS drivers. Cardsoft did do custom drivers for certain brands, I know that the HP Omnibook has a custom one.

Remember, PCMCIA soundcards in general are DMA-less, so don't expect SFX in DOS.
 
The original PCMCIA standard (later called PC Card) is basically just an ISA connection in a mobile module. An ISA adapter would be your safest bet, because you wouldn't have to worry about any drivers for the PCI card.

The later CardBus standard is based on PCI - but in most implementations, the 'controller' sat on both the PCI and ISA buses, PCI for CardBus cards, ISA for PCMCIA cards. As such, a PCI PCMCIA or CardBus adapter would need a PCI-to-ISA adapter onboard to work with PCMCIA cards.

When using a PCMCIA card on an ISA adapter, or a CardBus card on a PCI adapter, you would only need the drivers for the PCMCIA card itself. Many cards had DOS drivers, especially network cards, but by no means all cards.
 
Even in the case of using a PCMCIA card on an ISA adapter you need drivers for the socket controller. The socket controller is not just a passive ISA bus pass through. Look at a datasheet for the Intel 82365SL, which was one of the first PCMCIA socket controllers on the market and one of the most popular at the time. There are a bunch of registers in the socket controller which need to be programmed to map the I/O and/or memory windows of the PCMCIA card into the ISA bus space and route an IRQ for the card.
 
I had an IBM PS/2 E (9533) that had an ISA card that would accept up to 4 PCMCIA cards - two internal, and two that could have cables plugged into them externally.

It sort of worked, but I found it was much more trouble than it was worth. The card was somewhat unreliable when I used it in another ISA based machine. And using PCMCIA in DOS is generally quite a bit of trouble and requires a driver stack that uses a lot of conventional memory, or else needs a special PCMCIA stack with a DOS extender to use extended memory.

If you can find a PS/2 E, the PCMCIA stack that comes with PC DOS 7.0 or PC DOS 2000 supports the ISA to PCMCIA card.
 
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