... please.

And I'll even tell you why:

1. Wireless LAN
Yes, you can use an airport at the ethernet port, but there are some disadvantages:
- The things are very expensive ($200-$500, depending on the manufacturer) while a PCMCIA WLAN card is between $70-$200.
- There are some systems that can't switch from "ad-hoc" to "infrastructure" autmatically,
so everytime my car moves out of the network the other systems have to be reconfigured :(
- In the town I live we have a quite good Aviator2.4 base network and with the PC in my trunk I can read my email in the whole town ... with an "airport" that's impossible, with an PCMCIA card it's easy going ...

2. Flash Memory
If you have a digicam with let's say 32MB flash ram, you could just put it into your empeg and store the pictures on the internal harddrive, freeing the ram for new pics.

3. Firewire
I could connect my camcorder direcetly to the empeg and download some movies.
I could even convert them to mpegs while driving.

4. SCSI adaptor
CD-Writer: Writing your videos to a CD in your car ?!
Scanner: Scanning the map that friendly stranger lend you ?
External Display: Yes, I think there are PCMCIA base VGA cards ...

5. Modem
Read your emails everywhere ?

There are millions of other uses ....
Yes, you could do some of that stuff with the USB port, but it's not that flexible.


AFAIK the SA1100 eval kit includes PCMCIA doesn't it ?

If it won't be supported by the empeg directly, why not make an external (Ethernet) Server with the PCMCIA slot ?
(You could even add NFS mounted harddisks as additional mp3 space :) )

Just an idea ..

But I don't want to replace 17 Aviators with 17 Wavelans and some airports ... that doesn't make sense ...

ciao
Anti

Sorry, there's no room. Honest. We couldn't fit one in anywhere.

Also, firewire wouldn't work (we couldn't offer a cardbus 32-bit slot as there's no PCI bus on the empeg - all firewire cards are cardbus), most 100mbit ethernet cards are cardbus too, etc.

If it went anywhere, it'd have to go on the back of the unit - there isn't room around the display for a card slot - and this wouldn't exactly be an ideal place for a wireless card (surrounded on all sides by 1mm stainless steel!).

Making an ethernet<>pcmcia card adaptor is possible, but I'm afraid it'd be more expensive than you'd be willing to pay for. More likely is USB host, we're doing some USB host stuff for another project in house and if this works well it'll probably appear in a next-gen empeg (don't hold your breath, we're talking probably a year+ from now!).

Hugo

Don't get my wrong, but why didn't you design the MK2 then to have the PCMCIA slot external ?

I think I can probably answer this.

PCMCIA cards have a LOT of pins.

Lots of pins means lots of connections on the docking assembly to the harness. That means big honkin (expensive) connections, all for a minority of people who would actually use it.

D

Correct. We had a hard enough time finding a decent 24-way machine crimpable docking connector! If we could have found (eg) a 30 way we would have got ethernet and USB on the dock too...

Hugo

OK.

That looks like I have to dig up my autorouter again and fiddle together an external box.

I'm not good at this, but hey ... the AMD in my trunk is still alive ...

If anyone else is thinking about a "co-server" just include the PCMCIA slot and let me do what I was made for - software.

ciao
Anti