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Re: Lucent unveils wireless LAN USB client

From: Doug Sutherland <>
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 18:16:51 -0500

Cyborg Unit Matt wrote:

> Having just gone the other way I have to say that having it all on 
> one board is just to thick.

Okay, first of all, just how thick is that EM-350? I have been wondering
about that for a long time. Could you please place a ruler next to it 
and get a ballpark depth measurement? I just did this with the PCM-5822
and it's well under an inch, even with the CF socket sticking out the 
bottom. It measures about 1/8" shy of an inch from the bottom of the CF
socket to the top of the highest heat sink. Most of the board is much 
slimmer, less than 3/4 inch (God I hate this, I'm a metric person living
in a country in denial of the benefits of metric). 

BTW I don't agree that having it all on one board is just too thick, it 
could be slimmer, it's just the way that they design the boards that is 
the problem. I say this because some time ago I had a CardPC carrier 
board that had dual PCMCIA onboard, it was slimline. If their goal in 
PCB design was slimness, they could find a way. If you stack two pcmcia
cards on top of each other, that's your thickness. The carrier board 
that I used only added that amount of thickness (two stacked pcmcia 
cards) on the PCB surface). It had no space in between the cards, and 
the "housing" for the cards was thin aluminum. Unforrtunately the 
length and width was undesireable, the carrier board is now obsolete, 
and it had no multimedia capabilities. It SHOULD be possible to 
create a multimedia SBC with single pcmcia slot that is no thicker 
than the PCM-5822 or perhaps even more slimline. Some day I might try
designing my own.

> One of the reasons that I changed from the EM-350 to the PC-2553 is 
> the depth of the board.

How deep is it?

> 'The Plan'(Tm)

Tends to 'Change'(tm) before it ever gets implemented :)

> is to extend the PC-104 connection so that I can have a PCMCIA board 
> that is not right on top of the main board.

The probem is that there are 104 conductors between the CPU and the 
peripheral card. If you find a "clean" way to do this, please let 
us know. I started to make my own cables for this a few times, but 
gave up after 60 or 70 of the necessary 208 solder connections. I 
know that others have done this successfully, but either way I look 
at it there is no way to streamline 104 conductors. Sommebody needs
to build a special high density cable for this. The standard IDC 
cables are too thick. If you look at the density of SCSI cables and 
LCD connection cables, it could be a lot smaller, but needs to have 
the funky 104-pin connectors on the ends. If anyone is in the cable
business, please build and sell us these PC/104 extensions!

> The 10bT connection on the EM-350 never work anyway (without 12V that is)
> So my main use for the PCMCIA was my WLAN card. 

It really sucks that the enet hardware needs 12 volts!

  -- Doug

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