~Toughbooktalk~

So I'm looking into adding USB 3.0 to my toughbook (CF-30F), Expresscard looks like the only route. So here's some questions I don't have the answers for:

1: What brand should I look for or stay away from?
2: Would I be able to close the MP door if a flush-mount card is inserted? Like leave the card in when not using it.
3: How much heat do these cards put out? Don't want to burn out the card or overheat my toughbook from using the card too much. I had a USB 2.0 card in my CF-28 and that thing got red hot during use.
4: How's the power consumption with these cards while running on battery?

Looking forward to some good news hopefully not bad news!

More speed usually means more heat not less. It took a while to find any published power specs.
I did find these disappointing specs..Supports Bus power (100mA max/port) or 900mA max / port with external power adapter)
100ma means you can run a flash drive, but not much else. Unless you plug it in with the AC adapter.

I think you going to have the same problems as with the 2.0 card.

Avoid ALL of them.......This is from an old post...

Yup. You'll be lucky if you didn't burn out the power supply to your PCMCIA slot; the AKE shorty USB cards will do that when they fail. Hopefully you didn't have it plugged in long enough to do permanent damage.

The problem with these cards is this; the PCMCIA slot can provide 3.3V at 400ma to any card plugged into it (This is part of the JEDEC standard for PCMCIA). The USB ports need to put out 5V for many USB powered devices to function properly, so they have an inverter circuit (or DC-DC converter) to kick the voltage up. This would be fine, except for the fact that the JEDEC (Or is it IEEC? I can't remember) standard for USB is 5V/500ma per port. Now I know that it comes with a power dongle cord so you can plug into another USB port for additional current; but that's STILL not enough.

Remember the 3.3V/400ma limit of the slot... well, that includes the current to run the card itself, as well as anything plugged into it. Your card TRIES to feed that current load; but since it has poor (or none, probably) current limiting circuitry, some of that load gets transferred through the controller chip itself and PLOOP! dead card.

It's happened to me with at least two of the 6 cards I have; 2 others were DOA, started to heat up like a coffee warmer with nothing ever plugged into them. Another failed while I was learning these limitations and may either have failed due to initial suckage or due to my unwitting abuse. I have 1 left that still works; I only use it for meeses or Flash drives.

mnem
Short card? Short-lived.

The power problem will be worse with a Expresscard...They operate with lower voltages than a PCMCIA card, but still have to convert it to the USB 5v..This creates heat and drops the current available........

Too early to be thinking.....but....Shawn, how about wiring in a single USB3 connector plumbed into 5v? A while back I bought a CF-18 with the PC guts removed and four or five USB2 ports lined up inside the door. What a maze of wires...I think it still ran (maybe not).

My JT-B1 has a dock with two powered USB ports. (No external power equals no USB) Just saying.

USB 3.0 rewired to a real FUSED 5.0v source...Sure could.
Need to make sure it's the 5v that's OFF when the laptop is off.
..You would have to hard wire the PCMCIA or Expresscard in...
Connect the 5v source to the external AC power adapter port on the USB 3.0 card...
Robert's your mothers brother.

Thanks for all the info guys! Probably better just to stick with USB 2.0 on the toughbook, and leave the 3.0 to my desktop. Sounds like it would be more of a hassle with expresscards.