The Hagiwara ExpressCard CompactFlash Card Adaptor

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.hsc-us.com/consumer/card_adapter/EXPCF.html' target='_blank'>http://www.hsc-us.com/consumer/card_adapter/EXPCF.html</a><br /><br /></div>If you’re not familiar with the term ExpressCard, it wouldn’t surprise me. This replacement for the venerable Cardbus standard (often confused with PCMCIA) has been largely unknown, mostly because there’s not much need for it. I read a review recently of a laptop where the reviewer commented the ExpressCard slot was useless because there wasn't a single accessory for it. Fifteen years ago, laptops lacked much of what is now integrated (Firewire, Ethernet, later WiFi, etc.) and Cardbus slots were always crammed with one card or another to enhance functionality. By comparison, the only thing I’ve used in a Cardbus slot for on my laptops in the past five years is a CompactFlash card adaptor. I do most of my digital photo processing work on a Fujitsu N6220, a 17” widescreen powerhouse with two 100 GB 7200 RPM hard drives. Now that I’m shooting in RAW mode regularly with a Nikon D200, my 4 GB Kingston CompactFlash card fills up quickly. The problem is that moving 4 GB of photos from the CF card to my laptop using a PCMCIA adaptor takes a full 59 minutes (I tested it). That’s painful – the type of timeframe where you have to start the move not touch the laptop for an hour. My laptop also has an ExpressCard slot (I had to look up the name since I had never used it!) so I did a bit of research and discovered that there weren’t many things that plugged into that slot, but one of them just happened to be a CompactFlash card adaptor.<!><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/hagiwara-expresscard1.jpg" /><br /><br />And that brings us to the Hagiwara ExpressCard CompactFlash card adaptor (pictured above and <a href="http://www.hsc-us.com/consumer/card_adapter/ExpCF/expcf.htm">available direct from Hagiawara</a> for $59.95 USD). It's L:89mm x W:54mm x H:5mm in size, and weighs in at 20.6 grams. As you can imagine, it only does one thing: it allows you to access any CompactFlash memory card, Type I or Type II, via the ExpressCard slot. It mounts as a removable storage device accessible in My Computer just like a USB Flash Drive, and doesn't require drivers. So why would you go this route versus the more common (and cheaper) Cardbus adaptor? One word: speed. The ExpressCard standard offers a limit of 500 MB per second bandwidth, much more than the 132 MB per second offered by Cardbus. In my tests with the same 4 GB worth of photos mentioned above, I was able to complete the transfer in 10 minutes 52 seconds. That’s almost 600% faster than using the Cardbus adaptor, and to me that time saved is precious because I can get right down to editing rather than watching a long copy process finish.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/hagiwara-expresscard2.jpg" /><br /><br />The Hagiawara adaptor unfortunately isn’t flush with the ExpressCard port (see photo above), meaning you can’t travel with it in the slot. That’s quite unfortunate, because I’m in the habit of leaving my Cardbus CompactFlash adaptor in the slot making it a permanent part of the laptop. And given the cost, some may prefer to still use a Cardbus adaptor even if their laptop has an ExpressCard slot. Still, for my needs, the Hagiawa ExpressCard CompactFlash fulfills it's purpose quite nicely and has become a permanent part of my digital photography kit.

[Janak Parekh]

Jason, very interesting post. :) A few comments:

1. That CF adapter you were using... I bet it was PC Card and not Cardbus. Did it have the golden bumps on the top? If no, it was actually the older standard and was just leveraging the fact that Cardbus is backwards-compatible, and that's what would explain the extreme slowness there. I'd presume ExpressCard would still be faster than CardBus, though...

2. The ExpressCard standard, if I understand, no longer uses an eject button, instead opting for a card that can be "pulled out", which is why it protrudes.

3. This is an ExpressCard/54 card, which means it won't work in a MacBook Pro. Not quite sure why Apple decided they wanted to use an ExpressCard/34 slot.

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

1. That CF adapter you were using... I bet it was PC Card and not Cardbus. Did it have the golden bumps on the top?

Good question. Before writing this article, I always just thought of it as a "PC Card slot" and thought it was the same as PCMCIA. I knew Cardbus was the successor to PCMCIA, so I thought the CF adapter I had was Cardbus. The adapter in question I was using would seem to be a PC Card adapter, because I don't see any golden bumps. It's all so wonderfully confusing. :lol:

[Janak Parekh]

It's all so wonderfully confusing. :lol:

Yeah. :( Reading the PCMCIA organization's tech specs (http://www.pcmcia.org/pccard.htm) doesn't help too much, although there is this juicy nugget:

16-bit I/O Transfers (255 ns Minimum cycle)
* Byte mode: 3.92 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 7.84 Mbytes/sec

16-bit Memory Transfers (100 ns Minimum cycle)
* Byte mode: 10 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 20 Mbytes/sec

CardBus (32 bit burst mode)
* Byte mode: 33 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 66 Mbytes/sec
* DWord mode: 132 Mbytes/sec

The question is if the 32-bit cards must have the golden bumps or not. I was always led to believe they did, and therefore that would imply your adapter is 16-bit, which would explain why it's so freaking slow.

(And, by the way, I never saw a CF adapter with golden bumps...)

--janak

[jeffd]

funny you guys should do a news post about this, as I have had to educate myself on the differences between express and pcmcia with my new laptop.

The express card slot is actually capable of 2.5gigabytes per second. If that sounds familure, it should.. its a PCIe slot. As janak pointed out, cardbus is the same as PCMCIA except for the metal grounding strip on the tip, and yea that would explain that ultra slow transfer time jason. ;)

However unlike pcmcia/cardbus, expresscard is not backwards compatable. The largest difference is in going to PCIe, your connection is serial instead of parellel (this is the main reason theres no backwards compatability)

Now, considering the adapter being 60 bucks, I wonder if it would just be cheaper to buy a USB 2.0 CF adapter. USB 2.0 is capable of 400 megs/sec, more then enough for any memory card I belive.

I tell ya though, if your getting a new laptop.. internal wifi/bluetooth is a must. You want to remove most any need to use a pc slot, since you probably will no longer have one. ^^ I really wish they had implimented a dual slot bay that supported both cardbus and express card. Funny enough, under the slot on my express card is a memory card reader.. great except that it supports 5 formats, compact flash not being one of them. :(

(And, by the way, I never saw a CF adapter with golden bumps...)

Not sure how this works either. CF adapters are just a connector, no electronics, as CF cards are pin-compatable with PC card slots. However obviously they lack grounding strips. But if I am not mistaken, arnt there high speed CF cards that utilise the 32bit cardbus speeds? Maybe you can only get the speed if you use a native CF connection? My wifi adapters have a grounding strip, but my CF adapter does not.

[bmhome1]

My CARDBUS speed 32-bit PCMCIA>CF reader adaptor transfers 1GB CF cards in under TWO minutes consistently. A good quality high-speed (Kingston has reputation for scoring poorly in comparative speed tests) CF 4GB card should transfer in LESS than 8 minutes using one. Either Lexar or Delkin offer the same device for around $40 online:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00069P6BS/102-0088943-1025745?v=glance&amp;n=172282

It resides totally flush inside the PCMCIA slot, CF cards just side right in, and works seamlessly with both XP and Vista Beta 2.

My Panasonic CF>SD card adaptor slips into the Cardbus CF reader and provides same ultra-high speed transfers for top-rated SD cards such as the Transcend 150X 4GB SD. It actually transfers even faster than CF cards at about 1:40 per GB. These speeds the equal to USB2 or firewire card readers currently marketed.

I have transferred hundreds of Gb's of image captures with these devices with 100% reliability and never slower throughput IF using fastest cards.

I actually reversed switched from Mac to Windows laptop because of OSX horrible, spotty PCMCIA device support. I suffered for many months (as did numerous others) with OSX kernel panics (hard system freezes) just using PCMCIA readers with a Powerbook. Never an issue runninhg XP and now Vista. Go figure.

Suggest always to use "safely remove device" taskbar icon to ensure proper card dismounts. And always reformat cards in the camera before use to both write fresh directory and minimize fragmentation performance slowdowns.

BTW, the gold colored bumps strip on CardBus speed devices is merely to differentiate from 16-bit PCMCIA devices. The bumps supposedly prevented Cardbus devices from fully inserting into older 16-bit only slots. But Cardbus has been around since before 2000. True Cardbus speed CF PCMCIA readers ARE jammed with electronics, the simple $10 adaptors have nothing but pinouts.

[jeffd]

The bumps might be to prevent insertion in pcmcia only slots, but the metal strip is actually a grounding strip of wich its function is simular to that of 80 wire ide cables, that is the pinout of pcmcia and cardbus is the same, but the ground shielding lowers crosstalk so the cards can achieve the faster speeds.

I'm not sure why your card would have electronics inside it, compact flash cards and cardbus slots are the same pinouts, just different sizes that require a connector.

[Phoenix]

...Lexar... offer the same device for around $40 online:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00069P6BS/102-0088943-1025745?v=glance&amp;n=172282

Click on that link and one of the reviewers states:

"If you are looking for a way to get the data out of a high speed compact flash card, this is your answer. It can download 3.5GB from a Lexar 4GB WA Write Accelleration card in about 7 minutes. My old card took 35 minutes to do the same thing."

So there ya go. Getch yerself the fastest 4GB Lexar here, (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&amp;A=details&amp;Q=&amp;sku=420118&amp;is=REG&amp;addedTroughType=categoryNavigation) along with this Lexar Cardbus-enabled CF Media Adaptor here, (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&amp;A=details&amp;Q=&amp;sku=328110&amp;is=REG&amp;addedTroughType=categoryNavigation) and you'll be downloading four gigs in under eight minutes. Not to mention, it'll sit flush with the Cardbus slot. Both problems solved.

As far as the Express Card 54 slot is concerned, the only other accessory I've seen for it, is an analog TV tuner that HP sells here. (http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/product_detail.do?product_code=EP323AA%23ABA&amp;aoid=32861&amp;jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN) I have an HP zd8000 laptop with MCE '05 and an ECS. I've been tempted to buy this tuner card, but it's awfully expensive.

[jfields]

I have been regularly buying laptops from Dell for work for about the last two years. Our salespeople use them when out on the road to look up product information and place orders. Each laptop we order we get a Verizon Wireless Aircard to go with it. These are cardbus PC Cards.

This worked very well until about 2 months ago when Dell decided to eliminate all laptops with the older PC Card slots. Until last week there were no solutions to using an Aircard in a laptop with ExpressCard. In researching this issue I found almost no hardware that supports the expresscard format. While I am a big proponent of progress and not at all fond of the fact that we keep legacy technology around for so long(Parallel and serial ports) it would seem to me that eliminating all support for a legacy technology is a bad idea. Dell should have given buyers an option or only moved to the new technology for some of their systems.

[jeffd]

jfields, ouch. Thats what im talken, no warning, no dual slot changeover period.

However you can buy pcmcia USB adapters, its like an external drive that excepts pc cards and hooks up to usb2.0. A little bit of a hastle, but for the likes of aircards, might be worth it.

[gdoerr56]

I had the same issue with a new Dell XPS M1210 notebook. The solution I found was support for both Verizon and Cingular data services through the addition of internal PCIe cards. The laptop even has the antennas built in.

The cards are not cheap but they work great and even get better reception than the older cards since the antenna, I believe, is inside the display casing.

You can find the cards on Dell's site by searching for Verizon or Cingular. The listing says it's only for the M65 workstation but I have them both and they work in any Dell laptop with the PCIe slot open which include the newest XPS series and the D420/620/820 series.

Good luck!

[Janak Parekh]

While I am a big proponent of progress and not at all fond of the fact that we keep legacy technology around for so long(Parallel and serial ports) it would seem to me that eliminating all support for a legacy technology is a bad idea.
How long should we keep it, though? Computers have been shipping with ExpressCard for about 20 months now. A laptop isn't like a desktop where there's lots of room to keep extra slots or ports -- as it stands, most laptops today only have one ExpressCard or Cardbus slot. The increased prevalence of ExpressCard-only machines will finally "fix" this problem, as now there'll be an incentive to carry data cards in that form factor.

--janak

[jfields]

How long should we keep it, though?

I am not saying they should keep supporting the old technology forever! But they either should wait until there is significant market penetration of a new technology or my preference would be to give buyers a choice. I am able to choose many different options on the laptops I buy this should be another option that I can get either a PC Card slot or an Express Card slot. They also should not make a change like this as an "All or Nothing" solution, if it is not going to be an optional upgrade then they should have some of their laptop lines with the older PC Card slots.

[Janak Parekh]

I am not saying they should keep supporting the old technology forever! But they either should wait until there is significant market penetration of a new technology or my preference would be to give buyers a choice.
Perhaps. By the same token, they have given a choice for some while. At a point, one has to force adoption, and I think that's what vendors are doing. Parallel ports existed on PCs for far too long.

--janak