PCExpress - PCMCIA interchangability

2150 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Diane/Florida, Jun 23, 2007

victor808

Discussion Starter · Feb 2, 2007

Okay, I've got a Dell Inspiron E1505. Not a bad little laptop, has worked fine for me for about a year now. But I am going to be travelling for a couple weeks and have been given a PC5740 card for wireless mobile internet.

Unfortunately, the E1505 only has a PCExpress 54mm slot, and the two are clearly not compatible.

My question is, rather than shelling out $200 for a usb-to-PCMCIA adapter, can I pull my PCExpress slot out of the laptop and simply slide in an old PC slot I have laying around from an old Dell laptop (which is otherwise non-functional)? Is the interface with the motherboard compatible?

Are there any other options for connecting this PC card to my laptop? I have a firewire, ethernet, usb, serial and even a SD port.

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laboye

· #2 · Feb 4, 2007

Hi, and welcome to TSF. I'm afraid not. Not only are the connectors physically incompatible (they should be, anyway), but the PCI-Express/ExpressCard bus is a completely different architecture and in a completely different bus location than PCI/CardBus. Unfortunately, Dell has taken the initiative of attempting to "phase out" CardBus over ExpressCard by excluding CardBus slots on its machines, despite its obvious functional prowess over ExpressCard... Manufacturers like Toshiba and IBM currently include one of both slots. Sorry about the bad news...

-Ed

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victor808

Discussion Starter · #3 · Feb 5, 2007

Ah well, thank you anyway.

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Diane/Florida

· #4 · Jun 18, 2007

I'm stuck with 10 more months service ($600!) on my UTStarcom adapter that I used on my Gateway XP laptop in places without wireless access. (Basically, a cell phone connection to the Internet.) I now have an HP laptop with Vista that I love, but I can't use the PC card-style adapter in the ExpressCard slot. I've been getting the runaround from my cell service provider.

I've seen adapters for PC card slots to enable use of ExpressCards. Does anyone make one the other way around? I've heard there is supposed to be a sleeve available, but none of the big box stores knows a thing about it. HELP!

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twajetmech

· #5 · Jun 23, 2007

take a look at this...http://sewelldirect.com/Duel-Systems-ExpressCard-to-PCMCIA-Adapter.asp
much less than $200

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Diane/Florida

· #6 · Jun 23, 2007

Thank you very much! I was very excited when I saw that item because it seemed like the perfect solution . . . until I read that it is not compatible with the HP 6000 laptop which, of course, is what my husband and I have. If you know of similar devices without the compatibility issue, please let me know.

Thanks again -- Diane

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