Pc Cards; 32-Bit Cardbus & Zoomed Video Port - Asus M8 User Manual

PC Cards

The Notebook PC has one PC Card socket designed to interface with a Type I or Type II card. It allows
you to expand and customize your computer to meet a wide range of application needs. The PC Card
standard accommodates a number of function, communication, and data storage expansion options such
as Memory/Flash Cards, FAX/Modems, Networking Adapters, and MPEG I/II decoder cards. The Note-
book PC supports PCMCIA 2.1, 32bit CardBus, and Zoomed Video (ZV).
TIP: A PCMCIA MPEG I/II decoder card is recommended for slower Notebook PCs that experi-
ence frame skips during DVD playback. It is also great for the power user who wishes to work
while watching a DVD movie.
32-bit CardBus & Zoomed Video Port
The CardBus allows PC Cards and their hosts to use 32-bit bus mastering and operate at speeds of up to
33MHz, transferring data in burst modes comparable with PCI's 132MB/sec. By comparison, the stan-
dard 16-bit PC Card bus can handle only 20MB/sec. Since the Notebook PC is equipped with CardBus'
broader, faster data pathway, it can handle bandwidth-hungry operations, such as 100Mbps Fast Ether-
net, Fast SCSI peripherals, and ISDN-based video conference that are cutting-edge even for desktop
systems. The CardBus peripherals support plug and play.
The CardBus socket is backward-compatible with 16-bit PC Cards serving at 5 volts operation while
CardBus operates at 3.3 volts to reduce power consumption.
As part of the Notebook PC's advanced architecture, the Zoomed Video specification provides for full
frame-rate video display channel for applications like MPEG decoders for movies and games, TV tun-
ers, live video input, video capturing, and video conferencing. The Zoomed Video (ZV) Port allows
video data on a PC Card to be transferred directly into the VGA frame buffer, bypassing the CPU and
PCI system bus. It can promise a high quality real-time full-motion video playback without holding
back the CPU and system bus performance.
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PCMCIA Socket PCMCIA Eject Button