I'm considering purchasing a PCMCIA card reader for my desktop PC, to facilitate downloading images from my Dimage V. (Memorex has one external reader, along with other manufactureres). One that I saw attaches to the parallel port. I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience with these yet, and if so, any recommendations? Phil Frank

-- Philip Frank (70117.2336@compuserve.com), June 04, 1998

Answers

I had similar problems with PCMCIA readers, I tried for 3 months to read the flash card that came with Kodak DC50 through a PCMCIA Drive manfactured by Nokia with No Luck, Although my laptop did read the card fine.

I tried another type of cards on the PCMCIA drive, all worked well except the DC50 Flash Card.

Well, this is my experience with PCMCIA ! Can't help you much.

-- Fadi Husn (Fadi@libancom.com.lb), June 20, 1998.

I purchased the "Desktop PCMCIA Card Slots" by Linksys (P/NPCMRDWR. I am running the Windows 98 Beta version on my machine. I installed the 16-bit card and the drive and Windows 98 found it immediately, installed the PCMCIA Card Socket, etc. etc. When I insert the Compact flash adapter, it automatically creates (in my case)an F drive. Pretty slick and FAST !!!

-- Letty Wheeler (letty@nlis.net), June 23, 1998.

I wanted to get a desktop PCMCIA reader but my parallel port was pretty maxed out with a printer and scanner.

I found an ISA card solution made by ActionTek (model PC700). It is an ISA card and an internal 2-slot PCMCIA drive that fits in an internal 3.5" drive bay (or 5.25" bay with an optional kit). The drive cost me around $110 (they had a $10 cheaper model that used an older non-plug&play chipset). I also bought an ActionTek PCMCIA adaptor (approx $20) for the Compact Flash in my CoolPix 900.

The combo is working great! Installation was a snap, and the drivers work perfectly on my Win98 machine.

-- Jason Goldberg (jasong@aimnet.com), August 05, 1998.

'Don't know if they're still available, and it would be a bit of a hassle always reaching around the back of your PC, but I heard that NECX (www.necx.com) had ISA adapters available for PCMCIA cards. You'd have to have a spare ISA slot, and the socket for the PCMCIA card is in the back of the PC, but the kicker is they're (reportedly) selling them for only $10 each! Check their clearance center on-line to see if they're still available.

-- Dave Etchells (hotnews@imaging-resource.com), August 08, 1998.

I bought a compact flash/PCMIA reader from Buycomp for only $69. This one is made by ANTEC and is called the Photochute. It is wired in through the paralel port and seemed to work fine with the 4 meg card that came with my Nikon cool pics 900. I also bought a 32 meg card made by Viking. This compact flash card would nt owrk with the photochute. After much trouble and time I was able to figure out the card wasn't compatible with the photochute.

Antec product support confirmed there was a compatibility issue. They said they might be able to figure out what the problem was in a couple of weeks. I sent back the photochute back to Buycomp. I plan on buying a similar unit made by another company. The D store sells both the viking cards and this other PCMIA/compact flash reader.

-- paul kain (AKKAIN@worldnet.att.net), September 15, 1998.

Too many choices. From very expensive to cheap. Two common types of interface, the parallel, and usb, and the delux way of ie1394 fire wire link For external device, I prefer the usb device and easy to use. It supports hot-swap. I bought an external usb pc card + sm reader made by Carry for about $55. I use the sanddisk 96mb with the pc card adaptor. It's fast & convient to use. Uploading and downing loading (read/write) supports. http://www.carry.com.tw/ http://www.eagletec.com/ http://www.sandisk.com http://www.utopian.com.hk/

-- michael c. (ccolin@mailcity.com), August 24, 2000.

Linksys makes a PCMCIA desktop adaptor. http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-16332-404-107188.html?tag=dir

And plenty of vendors make PCMCIA card readers. I'm using a reflex 20 by schlumberger.

-mike

-- Mike A (mamante@yahoo.com), January 21, 2003.