P2 Cards and Macbook Pro compatibile?

[Shane Ross]

Nope…the MacBook Pro will not work. The P2 cards are PCMCIA and the new slots are PCI Express. Only the older G4 Powerbooks have these slots.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Noah Kadner]

Nope- you’d only be able to do it by connecting the camera via firewire and downloading the P2’s loaded in the camera.

Noah

[Markford Astina]

Does anyone know of a PCMCIA card reader that connects to a Firewire Port?

This would solve that problem wouldn’t it?

Why would apple take the PC slot anyways?

It was a great little thing to have on the mac laptops especially for us who work in video and film (which I would think is a big portion of their market)

[Shane Ross]

Panasonic makes a 5 card reader that is USB and Firewire 800. But it costs about $2000. You’re best bet is the P2 Store that is a storage download device that holds 60GB of card information. It goes for about $1600. VERY handy.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Uli Plank]

I don’t know of anything for FireWire, but one company has announced an adaptor from PCMCIA to the Express-Card slot to be out soon: https://www.duel-systems.com/products/adapters.aspx

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[David S.]

The duel system connects to the ExpressCard/34 slot.

Another company indicated it was developing a USB2 to PC card reader, but I’ve yet to see anything.

[Holycowseattle]

All,

I believe that the marketing gods have over-simplified the P2 concept and have created a great–fundamental misunderstanding that exists regarding the P2 cards.

I want everyone to read this closely and understand it please.

P2 CARDS ARE NOT PCMCIA CARDS.

THE TRUTH REVEALED:

P2 cards FIT into a PCMCIA slot and work with CARDBUS compatible computers.

CARDBUS is a modification/expansion of the PCI bus that works through the PCMCIA slot on properly equipped computers. It allows for the use of expansion devices that require PCI-bus type data rates—but implemented through the PCMCIA form-factor/interface. They created this because laptops are too small to put full-size PCI cards into. CARDBUS capable PCMCIA slots were the answer.

This fact seems to have beem lost over the years because the PCMCIA slot/form-factor (AND CARDBUS!) have been largely underutilized.

((So based on that you should all realize that PCMCIA “readers” will not work with P2 under ANY circumstances. You need full CARDBUS (PCI) capabilities.)) So stop trying to be cheap…they don’t exist except for the Panasonic one.

AGAIN FOR CLARITY:

P2 is NOT a PCMCIA based RAM card.
That is a markting oversimplification.
There is a lot more to the P2 card than a few SD chips crammed into a PCMCIA shell. The P2 has very little in common with the old PCMCIA SRAM cards we used to use for sound modules/samplers and our PSION organizers.

You should think of the Panasonic P2 card as a PCI RAID-0 controller with attached high speed RAM. The onboard RAID controller splits the data stream into 4 parts to get the 80MB/sec throughput the cards are capable of. (Each SD card has a 20MB/sec performance….combined as a 4channel raid, that gives us 80MB/sec of throughput….or 640Mb/sec.) DVCPROHD is a 100Mb codec, so you see we have plenty of headroom here.

Perhaps some will understand this best.
USB PCMCIA readers do not have the CARDBUS functionality.

Hope that helps.

Punit.

[Holycowseattle]

To answer one of the original questions:

For all of the new macbook pro owners, some manufacturers are working on an EXPRESSCARD to CARBUS adapter.

This will be a card that goes into your Expresscard slot on the new machine and will have a short cable to a PCMCIA reciver that is CARDBBUS capable. The P2 cards should work just fine with the newer laptops using the EXPRESSCARD to CARDBUS adapter.

-P

[Markford Astina]

Seems like for people who mainly deal with P2, that it’s better to hang on to their Powerbooks with the PCMCIA/Card Bus Slots until all these ‘coming out soon’ hardware have been released (tested, bug free and with a proven track record)

I wouldn’t think there would be such a great advantage to switch to the new Macbook Pro unles you really need windows. Isn’t this right? Or are there essential things in the Macbook Pros that you can’t do on the Powerbooks?

This leads me to another question – doesn’t this apply to the PowerMac Intel G5s & the Mac Pros? Been hearing a lot of discrepancies with the Mac Pros when it comes to compatibility issues. Seems like it would be wiser to hang on to your current PowerMac Intel G5’s as well, until all these bugs have been fixed.

Hmmmm…… ….looks like apple slipped a little bit with their new hardware.

Or maybe there’s a huge payoff waiting to come out of all this.

[Mitch Ives]

[Markford Astina] “Seems like for people who mainly deal with P2, that it’s better to hang on to their Powerbooks with the PCMCIA/Card Bus Slots until all these ‘coming out soon’ hardware have been released (tested, bug free and with a proven track record)”

Absolutely

[Markford Astina] “I wouldn’t think there would be such a great advantage to switch to the new Macbook Pro unles you really need windows. Isn’t this right? Or are there essential things in the Macbook Pros that you can’t do on the Powerbooks?”

Speed… like in almost as fast as a G5 tower. Screen quality, glossy option as well, 2GB ram, which helps FCP greatly, etc.

[Markford Astina] “This leads me to another question – doesn’t this apply to the PowerMac Intel G5s & the Mac Pros? Been hearing a lot of discrepancies with the Mac Pros when it comes to compatibility issues. Seems like it would be wiser to hang on to your current PowerMac Intel G5’s as well, until all these bugs have been fixed.

Hmmmm…… ….looks like apple slipped a little bit with their new hardware.”

The firmware fix took care of the only problem I was aware of… along with the drivers from AJA. I wouldn’t say Apple slipped… given the magnitude of what they changed, it seems quite stable. The PC mags are rating them faster and cheaper than the Dell/Gateway option… and that’s running Windows!

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com

Apple Certified Trainer: Final Cut Pro 5