alt Hacker NewsClose! The PC Card rename was because people were confusing the name of the association with the specific form factor.
PCMCIA and PC Card = ISA
CardBus = PCI and ISA - slot was backwards compatible so you could use a PC Card in a CardBus slot
ExpressCard = PCIe
Replies
geerlingguy • yesterday at 7:30 PM
Ah, completely forgot about CardBus. That was a fun time when we also had NuBus kicking around on some older Macs, too.
That's also not a perfect recollection, but is what my recollection was until I was looking up this history in the past week and found this nugget and posted it elsewhere. Quoting myself:
>So we know these were originally called PCMCIA cards, then later PC Cards, right? Well, I think I might have found the first mention of PCMCIA in PC Magazine. It is in a Dec 1991 column by Dvorak where he "introduces" the "PCMCIA PC-Card". Here's a quote, "In fact, the card should be referred to as the PCMCIA PC-Card, or the PC-Card for short. PCMCIA is the Personal Computer Computer Memory Card International Association (Sunnyvale, Calif., 408-720-0107), and it's the governing body that has standardized the specifications for this card worldwide. JEIDA works with the PCMCIA; it's specifications are identical."
>So at least according this Dvorak column, these were ALWAYS properly called "PC-Cards" (he used a hyphen), but early on people definitely were calling them PCMCIA cards and I remember the shift to everyone later (much later than this 1991 column) calling them PC Cards.