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The acronym PCMCIA represents both the PC Card standard (which specifies both card hardware and system software requirements), and the organization responsible for developing it. Originally, the standard was designed exclusively for memory cards (Release 1.0). These cards were being used in small handheld and laptop systems in lieu of a floppy disk drive and were all 3.3 millimeters thick. These were Type I cards (the "Type" refers only to the physical thickness of a PC Card, nothing more). Later releases of the PCMCIA standard (Release 2.0 and up) were expanded to include I/O cards, such as modems or network cards. Manufacturers were hard-pressed to make these more demanding cards fit in the 3.3 mm Type I form factor, however, so a Type II card was introduced with a thickness of 5 mm. A Type III card was also defined; these are 10.5 mm in height, and are often used for tiny hard disk drives (now up to 450 MBytes on a 1.8" drive!). Some manufacturers have made still thicker cards for larger capacity drives; although this is often referred to as Type IV, this has not been officially adopted by PCMCIA. While the PCMCIA standard has grown significantly, it has done a pretty fair job of staying backward-compatible with earlier cards (a Type I card can be used in a Type II or III slot, for instance).
PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) is an international standards body and trade association with over 300 member companies that was founded in 1989 to establish standards for Integrated Circuit cards and to promote interchangeability among mobile computers where ruggedness, low power, and small size were critical.
In the early 90's, the rapid growth of mobile computing drove the development of smaller, lighter, and more portable tools for information processing. One of the most exciting of these innovations was PC Card technology. The power and versatility of PC Cards quickly made them standard equipment in mobile computers.
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