X230 PCMCIA/Firewire Card.

[Beetlecrusher]

I am trying to find a suitable PCMCIA Expresscard/Firewire IEEE 1394 for my trusty old X230. I am looking to transfer a few old Digital 8 tapes onto HDD. I bought a 54mm Expresscard on Ebay but does not go all the way into the slot. Further investigation suggests a 34mm wide card is my only option. Could anyone please confirm which type of firewire card I need to fit into the X230 slot ? Thanks in anticipation.

[Bondi]

That's strange. X230 has 54mm Expresscard slot. Is your card actually a Expresscard or Cardbus/PCMCIA? Can you post a picture.

[Beetlecrusher]

I'm unable to post a photo at the moment but I know that it says "Cardbus" on it. It has three 1394a sockets as well as a DC input socket. I hope that helps.

[TPFanatic]

Cardbus doesn't fit in expresscard, they're different. I'm not sure what expresscard firewire devices exist.

[axur-delmeria]

Something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Exp ... B000VS6S0W

More than a decade ago, I tried a generic Expresscard Firewire adapter on my sister's Lenovo G460 (Core i3-330M) running Windows 7 32-bit. IIRC it did work, in the sense that the drivers installed and the video software detected it, but for some reason we were unable to actually transfer videos from the camcorder (Digi8 IIRC) to the laptop. IIRC the video software was complaining that it couldn't trap a signal (might be an IRQ) preventing it from starting the transfer. I reckoned it was some sort of driver issue.

Note that the same camcorder worked flawlessly on her previous laptop (Asus A8e) which had a built-in Firewire port, but it was running XP.

[Bondi]

Yeah, looks like you need a different card. It can be either 34 or 54mm, but should have "Expresscard" written on it.

[Beetlecrusher]

Thanks for the advice, I can see I have confused PCMCIA/Cardbus and Expresscard. I should have done my research more thoroughly before I bought it. I have seen 34mm Expresscards with IEEE 1394b sockets for sale on Ebay but there`s no guarantee that they would work, even if they fitted. I used to do all my video editing on a desktop PC with a firewire card installed but that gave up the ghost years ago. It would be easier to purchase a cheap, second hand desktop and put the firewire card in that. Nice to know where to go for advice though. As well as the X230, I have an X220, X260 and X13 Yoga !