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What Is a PCMCIA Memory Card?
PCMCIA memory cards have been on the market for over 25 years, but there is still a demand for this legacy product. These memory cards are appropriate for both consumer and industrial grade applications, with industrial designs featuring all of the standards you would expect from a rugged memory solution. In fact, PCMCIA memory cards are so reliable that they are frequently found in military applications, where data loss cannot be tolerated. With capacities of up to 4GB and a long history of successful operation, it’s not surprising that these memory cards are still in use.
Where PCMCIA Cards Are Used Today
PCMCIA cards—also simply called PC cards—were introduced in 1990 and were the standard form of memory used in both commercial and industrial applications for a significant period of time. Although new advances have been made in flash memory storage since this form factor was introduced, there are many products still being used that have PC cards. As such, the demand for new PC cards remains high. Today, PC cards can be found in laptops, cell phones, computer joysticks, security tokens, docking stations, and many other consumer applications.
Frequently, PC cards are utilized in industrial grade applications. One of the reasons you can find PC cards in so many industrial applications is that industrial grade products are built with controlled bills of material and long life cycles, so PCMCIA cards are there on a legacy basis. They are also valued by industrial application engineers because they are so rugged, reliable, and trusted throughout the industry.
The Features of Industrial PCMCIA Cards
Industrial grade PCMCIA cards can operate in temperatures of -40 degrees C up to 85 degrees C, and they can be stored in even more extreme temperatures, ranging from -50 degrees C to 100 degrees C. They have capacities of 128MB up to 4GB. Read speeds are up to 10MB/s and write speeds are up to 6MB/s. Both fixed disk and removable configurations are available.
Industrial PCMCIA cards feature SLC NAND flash memory. SLC, or single-level cell, memory provides the highest level of data protection available as well as fast speeds, thanks to the single bit of data that is written per cell.
Delkin recognizes the importance of long life cycles for industrial products and offers PCMCIA cards to keep industrial applications functioning. For additional information about industrial grade PC cards and other PATA storage options, contact our technical team.
