PCMCIA Memory Card Hardware Considerations (System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems)

System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems

PCMCIA Memory Card Hardware Considerations

A Solaris platform can format PCMCIA memory cards for use on both Solaris and DOS platforms. However, the hardware platform imposes some limitations. These limitations are summarized in the following table.

Platform Type	PCMCIA Memory Cards Format Type
SPARC based systems	UFS
	MS-DOS or NEC-DOS (PCFS)
x86 based systems	UFS
	MS-DOS or NEC-DOS (PCFS)

PCMCIA memory cards formatted for UFS are restricted to the hardware platform on which they were formatted. In other words, a UFS PCMCIA memory card formatted on a SPARC platform cannot be used for UFS on an x86 platform. Likewise, PCMCIA memory cards formatted on an x86 platform cannot be used on a SPARC platform. This is because the SPARC and x86 UFS formats are different.

A complete format for UFS file systems consists of the basic “bit” formatting plus the structure to support a UFS file system. A complete format for a DOS file system consists of the basic “bit” formatting plus the structure to support either an MS-DOS or an NEC-DOS file system. The procedures required to prepare a PCMCIA memory card for each type of file system are different. Therefore, before you format a PCMCIA memory card, consider which file system you are using.