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Useful ExpressCard 3/4 accessories

R

retta283

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Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
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As some of you may remember, I was on the search for a laptop to replace my old, poor 2008 unibody MacBook. I found a late 2008 unibody MacBook Pro, at a very reasonable price of $40. This machine is intended to run OS X Leopard/Snow Leopard.

Now that I have an ExpressCard slot, I am thinking of ways to populate it. I know I can get an SD card reader, but anything else that could be of use?
 
eyoungren said:
Thunderbolt?

USB-C?

USB 3.0?
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Is the bandwidth of EC able to support the true speeds of any of these interfaces? The only major use I'd have for this is using an external drive for large files, if the bandwidth can support it anyway.

I'd seen someone talking about using an eGPU with this, but I haven't found much for sale and I've heard you lose a chunk of the GPU performance over interface. If it worked well, this could be an excellent way to boost performance.
 
retta283 said:
Is the bandwidth of EC able to support the true speeds of any of these interfaces? The only major use I'd have for this is using an external drive for large files, if the bandwidth can support it anyway.

I'd seen someone talking about using an eGPU with this, but I haven't found much for sale and I've heard you lose a chunk of the GPU performance over interface. If it worked well, this could be an excellent way to boost performance.
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I have no idea. It was just thoughts off the top of my head.

The MBP I am typing this on is my work Mac and it uses a USB-C adapter for both Ethernet and a third display when I'm at work. So, I just thought those might be options. The rest I just kind of threw in.
 
https://www.delock.de/produkte/G_459_Express-Card---PCMCIA/all.html?setLanguage=en

eSATA, Ethernet, FireWire, Serial, USB 3.0

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-1-and-up-with-pcie-expresscard-slot.2135898/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/a-beastly-macbook-4-1.2175397/

DIY eGPU - I know the second thread is a shameless plug. Sue me :) This is the adapter used: https://www.ebay.com/itm/233258262676 (MODS: NOT MY AUCTION!!!)

The bandwidth of ExpressCard is identical to a single PCIe 1.0 lane, i.e. 250 MB/s is the theoretical maximum. While this is slower than USB 3.0 or USB-C, it is still significantly faster than USB 2.0 {~60 MB/s theoretical maximum).

Using an eGPU designed for PCIe x16 will obviously result in a noticeable performance hit compared to running it at full tilt, but again, if you use a recent one it will be substantially faster than the MBP's internal iGPU/dGPU and give you additional and more recent and capable display outputs. 4K at 60 Hz? No problem with a modern eGPU :) Using the MBP's outputs - umm, yeah...
 
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One important thing, these devices would need to be supported under 10.5 or 10.6, I'm not sure if there would be any sort of driver issues trying to use them there.
 
retta283 said:
One important thing, these devices would need to be supported under 10.5 or 10.6, I'm not sure if there would be any sort of driver issues trying to use them there.
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That certain USB3.0 card, I've linked too works out of the box with no additional drivers necessary (at least that version for ElCap and above).
I have several SD-Card-readers and all of them work plug&play.
 
bobesch said:
That Delock USB 3.0 probably won't work on a Mac ...
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Oops, you're right. No Mac OS X drivers for this particular USB 3.0 card. The other cards listed by Delock do have drivers for OS X, though.
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retta283 said:
One important thing, these devices would need to be supported under 10.5 or 10.6, I'm not sure if there would be any sort of driver issues trying to use them there.
Click to expand...
Apart from the USB 3.0 one, Delock's cards have drivers for 10.4 and/or 10.5 and/or 10.6.

There are also ExpressCard TV tuners or 3G modems.

I've also found a docking station/port replicator that connects via ExpressCard and includes a "real" GPU providing VGA and DVI outputs. However, it's an XGI Volari Z9 which (1) doesn't have Mac drivers and (2) is useless for 3D/video.
 
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