What will read this old flash card?

[Zarathustra[H]]

What the title says.

This was located in the document room at work in a folder with some old documents. We suspect something we may need may be on it, but I have never seen a flash card this big (physically).

Does anyone know what format it is, and how we might go about reading it?

The connector side is remeniscent of CompactFlash, but I don't think it is.

Pics:

Any ideas?

it may be PCMCIA, but how would I read that today?

Much Obliged,
Matt

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

That definitely looks like PCMCIA to me. You would need something like this or an older laptop with that slot to read it.

 

[treadstone]

Yep, that's a PCMCIA memory card. Any 'older' laptop (I'm thinking 486 and Pentium days) should have a PCMCIA slot and be able to access the card. If you don't have one of those laptops around anymore, you might be able to get an external PCMCIA card reader that connects to your computer via USB...

 

[dustNbone]

I've seen PCI cards that had a PCMCIA slot in them, around 30 bucks. I've never seen a USB one but they may exist.

 

[mwroobel]

The USB adapters are available but are significantly more expensive than the PCI cards.

http://www.google.com/products/cata...a=X&ei=B0zCTuzBJ6bs0gG0loGmDw&ved=0CFYQ8wIwAA

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Thanks guys!

I actually found a working laptop with what at least is a pin compatible slot. (Dell Latitude D620).

I was familiar with PCMCIA, but I only ever used it to equip older laptops with wifi cards. Never knew they sold flash memory for them

 

[David_CAN]

I was familiar with PCMCIA, but I only ever used it to equip older laptops with wifi cards. Never knew they sold flash memory for them

CompactFlash (the bigger cards you still use for professional cameras) works the same way, it's just a smaller PCMCIA connector like a 25-pin vs 9-pin serial connector. Before 5 million-in-1 card readers (and USB in general) where common a PCMCIA pin adapter was the main way to read them.

On the flip side the fact that CompactFlash was really a full PCMCIA device opened up some interesting possiblities - IBM microdrives (mechanical 1" harddrives in a CompactFlash form factor) as well as hacking a 'reverse' PCMCIA pin adapter in order to plug a full size PCMCIA modem or network card into early Windows CE PDAs which had CompactFlash memory slots.