El Fontanero via talk wrote:
<In Palin's voice> Why, we'd 'a given our eye teeth for PCMCIA! In *my* day...
Back in the day a REAL card went 9 Edge First, and you'd best remember to dump out the chad hopper after punching your program. I think I still have a FORTRAN deck I did back when. Meanwhile, addressing the old-media-compatibility issue, having USB dongles that do the job is probably[0] the third best thing, second best is keeping an old system[1] around that still has the relevant readers[2], and the best is to have dubbed all your old media to newer storage during the era both were current so you'd not have to worry about whether you can get one more gasp out of the corpse of dead technology. For a laptop, portability, usability, and not being so stinking expensive you're afraid to take it anywhere are key attributes. Being able to leave most of your bag of tricks at home or in the car or in the laptop bag can really save weight and clutter. [0] those are never quite the same as the classic hardware they replace. [1] eventually ancient hardware supported in an earlier Linux will be forgotten by newer kernels; a software upgrade on your designated dinosaur can too easily be what kills it. [2] optical drive or some of the three sizes of floppy[3] drive. [3] formats were never quite the same; who else remembers the story of how Apple ][ floppies were written and read based on 6502 clock cycles of the I/O loop, or ran the disassembler deep enough to comprehend the true horror of how CP/M on that platform did its disk functions? -- Anthony de Boer