PCI to Cardbus bridge

I recently purchased an SB51G. Although this is not my first SFF PC, it will be the first one that is actually fast enough to be my main machine. I only have a need for one PCI slot, but I thought why should I settle for 1 PCI slot when I can have 2 Cardbus through use of a PCI to Cardbus bridge.

After searching for a couple minutes, I can only find this one and it seems to only be available from that website (possibly the manufacturer's). That price is way out of line. Is anyone familiar with a cheaper adapter? I see PCMCIA versions, but that is not good enough since I have 802.11a. Thanks.

Also not cheap but what about http://www.elan-digital-systems.co.uk/adapter/p222.php ?

-Zeke

OK, that one is a bit less expensive. Still too much though. Thanks.

It's slim pickings for 32 bit cardbus adapters. I looked long and hard before finding that one (I have one). None of the 32 bit adapters I saw had front-mount options due to some technical limitation whose details I don't recall presently. 16 bit cards were available lots of places. Are you going to use the 3.5" bay for a front PCMCIA adapter? They do have the P416 with one 16 bit slot (front) & one 32 bit slot (rear). I'd have gotten that had it been available when I purchased. The card works well & I've had no problems with the drivers.

Not on topic but they also make a cool 4 way Secure Digital, Multi Media, Memory Stick or Smart Media adapter that looks pretty tasty (CA401).

Is the Shuttle going to replace your desktop or be a multimedia machine? In either case I'm jealous as my toy budget is currently zero.

-Zeke

The Shuttle will replace my main desktop (I have a few machines). It is very rare that I play games, but I will eventually replace my aging Radeon AIW with a Radeon 9700 AIW.

I would rather have the two slots in the back since I plan on installing a floppy drive in the Shuttle. I may go for that adapter you have. It all depends on how cheaply I can pick up a Dlink 802.11a Cardbus card.

Radeon 9700 AIW - I was just reading about that today, that thing sounds killer. I've heard a lot of good things about the original AIW card. The cardbus w/802.11a or 100bT in the back with the front slot & a media card adapter, a 120GB and that 9700 AIW would be a fantastic media center machine. DVD RW (either flavor) or CD-RW would be a tough call though. The only other thing I'd throw on would be an RF remote receiver for winamp control.

-Zeke

The AIW 9700 comes with the Remote Wonder, and the software includes a plugin for Winamp 2.x control.

The Remote Wonder is awesome for media systems, as it's RF, and the play/pause buttons work great for network media when using the ATI File Player.

it will be the first one that is actually fast enough to be my main machine

533mhz. Really!?

Edit: How much was it?

I've got the P222 adapter from Elan as well and as you said, it works very well with Linux and Windows XP. It is very pricey still though.

The limitation is that you'd need a long cable to connect the front bay to the card. It would violate the PCI specifications which CardBus is based on. 16 bit cards work in the front bay because the specification is much less stringent.

- Trevor

533mhz. Really!?

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you think that the CPU is 533? If you do, that's the max supported bus speed of the P4 which is high compared to AMD's forthcoming 333MHz.

The SB51G cost $320 from mwave.com and I bought the P4 2.4GHz (533MHz bus) for $189 from newegg.

DVD RW (either flavor) or CD-RW would be a tough call though.

I have a DVR-A04 DVD-RW and LiteOn 16x10x40x CD-RW in my main machine now (an Athlon XP2000+). I decided that I will toss the CD-RW since I rarely burn anything (thank you empeg). The DVR-A04 burns CDs at 8x (I think), so it's not a huge loss.

I'm sorry, I just looked quickly, my oversight.
That thing is pretty sweet.

Very nice on the RF control. I use an old one from X10 but it's a champ with maX10 http://max10.sourceforge.net/ software. The volume ramp is too slow though.

mmmm new systems...

-Zeke