The notebook/desktop liaison

by Graeme Bennett

CARDMaster-FD2 PCMCIA card drive
From: Telework Computer International
Price: $199

The CARDMaster PCMCIA card drive from Ontario-based Telework is one of those products that just works. It allows your desktop PC to use PC Cards, those credit-card-shaped adapters that are commonly used to add modems, network cards, SCSI adapters and other devices to portable computers.

The Telework card drive is supplied as two components: a Plug and Play ISA card and a unit shaped like a floppy drive (that fits into a standard 3.5-inch floppy drive bay), which connects via a ribbon cable to the ISA card. Mounting brackets were also supplied with our test unit to adapt the drive to 5.25-inch floppy drive bays.

Once installed, the card drive needs no additional software under Windows 95, NT4 or OS/2. These operating systems have built-in support for PCMCIA devices. As far as the operating systems can tell, the card drive-equipped PC is simply some sort of portable computer and they treat it as such. Because Windows 3.x does not include built-in support for PCMCIA devices, the package also includes a driver disk containing the highly regarded CardSoft drivers. The CARDMaster comes with a one-year warranty.

The Telework card uses the Intel PCMCIA chipset, which proved to be very compatible with the cards I tried, although OS/2 seemed to have more trouble (it thought a SCSI card was a modem, for example) with a few of the PCMCIA cards I tested than either NT4 or Win95.

Once the card was installed on our Windows 95 system, we simply needed to open the Add New Hardware control panel, double-click the PCMCIA Socket entry and choose the option for "PCIC or compatible PCMCIA controller," then click Finish. The manual explains the entire procedure very clearly. Once the system was restarted, we were done. NT is roughly similar, except that the cards are not hot-swappable as they are in Windows 95. (Hot swappable means that the cards can be inserted and removed without powering down and restarting the system.) In NT, PCMCIA services are started from the Devices control panel. In OS/2 Warp, we chose PCMCIA support (Intel type) from the list of hardware options at startup time.

Conclusion

Because PCMCIA cards, in our tests, have tended to provide trouble-free installation and configuration of hardware devices, this unit brings this advantage to desktop PC users. Because PC Cards are somewhat more expensive than their ISA or even PCI equivalents, you end up paying approximately 50 percent more for the luxury of hot-swappable, Plug and Play convenience. For those users who have a portable computer and/or access to one or more PCMCIA cards, and want to make good use of them on a desktop PC, this product is an excellent solution, especially if you are able to take advantage of PCMCIA's capability of "hot-swapping" devices. Now that's Plug and Play.

Contact:
Telework Computer International, 846 Muirfield Cr., Kingston, ON, K7M 8G5.
Tel: 613-540-0684.
Fax: 613-547-3201.

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TCP Online February 1997 Issue