Overview for PC Card

Windows supports PC Card I/O cards. Memory PC Cards are only supported as legacy devices. For any PC Card device to work effectively with Windows, the manufacturer must implement a minimum set of tuples documented in the PC Card Standard. Windows uses these tuples to identify and configure any PC Card.

For PC 97, the new design concerns for PC Card are the following:

• New design guidelines for CardBus host controllers and cards.
• New power management guidelines, including requirements for the PC Card controller to meet new PCMCIA class power-management specifications being developed as part of the OnNow design initiative.

These new design details are discussed in this chapter.

Note Because CardBus implementations are just beginning, additional requirements might arise. As implementation details become available, Microsoft will provide information about revisions to the hardware requirements and recommendations at http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/.