Thread

Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB?

68kMLA OS 8 13 posts Mar 5, 2013 to Mar 18, 2013

#1 Tue, 5 Mar 2013 - 06:52 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #1

I know you can get PCMCIA Slots for the 540c,

do you think a usb card would work with Mac OS 8.1

I wanted to use this for thumb drives.

#2 Tue, 5 Mar 2013 - 12:10 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #2

Not going to happen sadly - the PCMCIA slot needs to be CardBus compliant, which the 5x0 series does not have. There does not exist a PCMCIA non-cardbus USB card (CardBus is basically a variant of a PCI slot).

You can however use something like a PCMCIA --> CF adapter quite successfully in a 540c. CF-->SD card adapters also exist, include a SD-->MicroSD adapter--->mini USB Micro SD adapter/dongle, kind of like a flash drive.

#3 Tue, 5 Mar 2013 - 15:36 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #3

Thanks, now all I need to do is find a PCMCIA slot for my 540c.

If anyone has one they would want to sell me, I would appreciate it.

#4 Tue, 5 Mar 2013 - 15:45 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #4

I don't want to get a whole new topic started, so at the risk of thread-jacking; while we're on the topic of pre-osX pcmcia solutions;

An Orinoco WaveLan card in my Powerbook 5300c running system 7-8 - Possible?

#5 Tue, 5 Mar 2013 - 16:25 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #5

yes it is possible, me I just jacked an original airport station and pulled the card out and bam airport capable card.

#6 Tue, 5 Mar 2013 - 16:32 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #6

Get out of here! I had no idea that the Base Stations had a physical card in them. I always assumed all the "wi-fi stuff" was embedded on the mainboard. I just googled for images and sure enough! That's good to know considering you can get base stations on ebay for $10 bucks!

#7 Tue, 5 Mar 2013 - 18:16 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #7

PCMCIA/PC Card is 16 bit.

Cardbus is 32 bit; so is USB.

#8 Tue, 5 Mar 2013 - 19:36 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #8

Get out of here! I had no idea that the Base Stations had a physical card in them

Yes all of them (UFO ones at least) The graphite has an Orinoco card, the snow one the Original Airport card and the Extreme...guess what.

You are right too, ABS are far cheaper than the physical cards

#9 Wed, 6 Mar 2013 - 20:32 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #9

Yup, one of my gumdrop iMacs is using an WaveLAN Silver card that was pulled out of my original AirPort Base Station when it died. Took some effort to shoehorn it into the AirPort Adapter, but I got it in there - OS recognizes it as a "true blue" AirPort card just fine.

I've used WaveLAN Gold cards just fine in PowerBook 5300, 1400, and 190s. I tried to get it to work in my 540, but I don't have the right version of the PCMCIA cage.

#10 Mon, 18 Mar 2013 - 00:01 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #10

postby uniserver » 05 Mar 2013, 09:36Thanks, now all I need to do is find a PCMCIA slot for my 540c.

If anyone has one they would want to sell me, I would appreciate it.

Would a cage from a Pismo work here? I can come up with at least one.

#11 Mon, 18 Mar 2013 - 01:04 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #11

i think the one for the 540c was somewhat special.

#12 Mon, 18 Mar 2013 - 02:14 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #12

The cage from the Pismo will not work. In fact, it probably won't even fit.

#13 Mon, 18 Mar 2013 - 05:47 Powerbook 540c, Possible to get USB? — #13

The Pismo CardBus slots are PCI based. No 68k Powerbook has PCI.

The 5x0 series PCMCIA cage and adapter are attached to a subset of the '030 PDS, present in the 5x0 for this purpose only.