Fujitsu PCMCIA and IO

[Alex.Goodyear@xxxxxxx]

Hi

I have a couple of questions and observations about the Fujitsu PT510.

First, I've been investigating PCMCIA cards, namely 10/100 Ethernet cards,
56K & 10/100 Ethernet combo cards and a PCMCIA to USB interface card.
One
thing that keeps cropping up is that some cards say they require a CARDBUS
32bit slot. As far as I can determine the PT510 has a PCMCIA 2.1 compliant
slot but I don't know if this means that it is 32bit CARDBUS compliant. Can
anyone comment on this?

Secondly, does anyone know of a source for the portable port expander or
the
pinouts of the Molex expansion connector. I think I'm going to require 2
RS232 ports and the extra IO offered by the parallel port could provide
some
interesting monitoring capabilities.

I've noticed that there is a memory upgrade frenzy at the moment but I'm
not
sure that these units will require it. Obviously some people will have
memory hungry applications but I'm sure that most people will be able to
manage with 32MB of RAM. I base this observation on the fact that I have an
IBM 486/75Mhz SX CPU 8MB RAM based machine that is triple boot configured
to
run either Linux, Win3.11 or Win95. This machine runs fine and in fact
boots
and shuts down faster that either a Pentium 233MMX or an AMD 300Mhz when
running Win95. Admittedly the 486 doesn't have any games, magazine review
programs, firewall or major applications installed but it is usable. Before
I installed a 10Mbit Ethernet card, the 486 was networked to the Pentium
233
via RS232. It was possible to access the 233s floppy disk, hard drive and
CD-ROM, slowly but it worked. I assume one could do the same to install
Ethernet drivers on the PT510.

I intend to use the PT510 as a device that is on the majority of the time.
It will be connected to a voice/data/fax (and CLI) modem and act as a voice
mail answerphone, my interface to the Net, MP3 player selection interface
console (already have multi-room MP3 controlled by X10 RF), a calendar
&
reminder program.

--
Alex Goodyear.