JP2003076949A - Multi-type memory card drive - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a multi-type memory card drive. SOLUTION: The memory card drive built in a computer system or externally connected to the computer system or another digital product can read out/write information from/in memory cards of many kinds of standards. The memory card drive is constituted so as to insert each of existing SMS, MMC, MS and SD cards having similar size into one single slot and insert each of CF card types 1, 2 or PC card types 1, 2 and 3 into the other single slot, so that the drive can read out file data from an optional memory card. Since the drive is designed so as to support an IDE/ATAPI, USB or 1394 transmission unit, all memory cards being in circulation at present can be inserted into the memory card drive of single slot design or double slot design to read out/write data.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a multi-type memory card drive that is built in or externally connected to a computer system or other digital products, and can read and write memory cards of various standards by its single or double slot. The present invention relates to a multi-type memory card drive which satisfies the demands of various consumer groups and solves the drawbacks of the known design that the memory card drive is more than three slots and is easily confused, mistaken and damaged.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A memory card drive is a device capable of reading and writing to a memory card. Memory cards are light, thin, short, and small, and have high storage capacity, earthquake resistance, and excellent characteristics that enable multiple-order redundant storage, so they are widely used in the information appliances area (IA-In
application and various types of portable digital products, and for example, a memory card drive is adopted in products that are attracting attention in the market such as PDAs, digital cameras, and MP3 players.

[0003] Information appliances are a new field, and products are considerably new and plural, so that the standards of memory cards are being developed by national government makers and competing for the market. Currently, there is no unified standard in memory cards in the world, related products are diversified, and each of them has market dominance. However, because there are no standards that match memory cards, there are many kinds of memory cards between portable digital products and computer systems and computer peripherals, and it is not possible to achieve effective distribution. Besides, it is inconvenient. The various memory cards currently in circulation are as follows. 1. PC card (PCMCIA A0A Flash
Card) The PC card standard is a memory card exclusive standard established by PCMCIA, and the length of this standard is 85.6 mm.
It has a width of 56 mm, and depending on its thickness, type 1
(10.5 mm), type 2 (5.5 mm), type 3
It is divided into three types (10.5 mm) and is mainly applied to notebook personal computers. 2. CF card (CompactFlash Car
d) The CF card standard is a memory card that is fairly light, thin, short, and small, and its standard is 43 mm in length, 36 mm in width, and depending on its thickness, it is of type 1 (3.3 mm) or type 2 (5 mm), respectively. It is divided into two types, small volume, light weight, good data storage, high reliability and power saving characteristics, so it has been widely accepted as a consumer electronic product, most of which are PDA and digital camera. , MP3
It is used in peripheral equipment for information appliances such as players. 3. SM card (Smart Media (registered trademark)
Card) The SM card standard is only 0.76mm at the beginning, and the manufacturer directly adopts a special card type package for the flash memory, and its electrical interface and the manufacturer's flash memory are the same, and it can be used for digital cameras and MP3 players. It is applied. 4. MMC Card (MultiMedia Card) The MMC card standard is the smallest memory card in the market today, with a minimum thickness of 1.4 mm and a serial interface, which is mainly used for MP3 players and handy machines. Adopted in the area of. 5. MS Card (Memory Stick Car)
d) The standard external dimensions of the MS card are about one piece of gum, and a serial interface is used. The patent right for this memory card belongs to Sony, as well as being adopted by other manufacturers under license. The products to which the MS card is applied in the current market are products developed and sold by Sony, such as digital cameras, MP3 players, PDAs, portable players, handy machines combined with online functions, and personal computers. 6. SD card (Secure Digital Ca
rd) The SD card standard has a thickness of 2.1 mm, the other external dimensions are the same as the MMC card, and adopts a serial interface, which is mainly applied to the MP3 player, digital camera, and PDA markets. . Mainly applied to notebook PCs.

The standard dimensions of the above-mentioned various memory cards are different from each other, and due to the rapid development trend of information home appliances and the inconsistency of memory cards, each manufacturer has different memories for different memory cards. We are trying to meet the market demand by developing memory card drive products that support the card standard. However, due to the standardization of memory cards, memory card drive manufacturers support various types of memory cards only by increasing the number of slots in the memory card drive. For example, three-slot (3 types of memory card standards Support),
There are four-slot (supporting four types of memory card standards) memory card drive products.

Although the known method and structure of a multi-slot memory card drive can solve some of the problems of the non-uniformity of the memory card standard, there are more problems in using by the user. And brought inconvenience. For example, 1. Too many slots caused confusion in usage. For example, if the memory card drive used by the user is a four-slot model and supports memory cards of four types of standards of SM, MMC, MS, and SM, this multi-slot memory card drive is connected to the system. After booting, the screen can only display a number of F slots / G slots / H slots / I slots, SM slots / MMC slots / MS slots / S
The M-slot marking cannot appear, and the user cannot easily determine which marking represents which type of memory card is inserted in the slot, resulting in confusion in use. . 2. Too many slots created inconvenience in use. For example, if the memory card drive is designed to support the IDE / ATAPI system interface, only two slots in the four-slot memory card drive can work simultaneously when connected to the system (IDE / ATAPI system interface). ATAPI, in support of the end of the host, most of the wiring of each one only performs two sets of different signal processing), the other two slots are equal, the user is the third memory card If you wanted to do a read or write operation to the slot, it wouldn't work, even causing a system outage. 3. In addition, too many slots may cause user's insertion error, that is, insertion into the wrong slot and damage of the memory card or slot, and high manufacturing cost, excessive volume, and poor built-in support. However, these are all serious drawbacks of the known memory card drives over three slots.

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The main object of the present invention is to enable a memory card drive of a single or double slot design to support a large number of different memory card standards at the same time, making various memory cards easy and convenient. In this way, it is possible to communicate with various different portable products, personal computers and computer peripherals without any obstacles, thereby providing users with excellent convenience of use.
Another object is to solve the drawbacks of the known technology that are likely to cause user confusion.

A second object of the present invention is a simplified design and
Supporting IDE / ATAPI, USB or 1394 transmission unit design, the memory card drive can easily be built in or circumscribed to various standard computer systems and related peripheral equipment to meet various consumer demands. To align the memory card with and make the memory card drive more in line with the market mechanism.

In addition, since the memory card standard cannot be standardized, the system manufacturer hesitates whether or not the memory card drive should be built into the system.
This indirectly causes a phenomenon in which various types of memory cards appear and causes confusion, which is a loss of interest to consumers. In order to solve this, the multi-type memory card drive of the present invention overcomes the technical problems encountered in the built-in system, thereby giving a great gospel to the system manufacturer or the consumer.

[0009]

According to the present invention, a main body of the invention is built in a computer system or other digital products, and has a housing space inside, and a circuit board and other electronic parts in the housing space. A memory card having a first slot entrance at its front end can be inserted into the main body through the first slot entrance, and the main body and the first slot correspond to the first slot entrance in the main body. It is provided at a position, and an intermediate portion thereof is used as a locking area, and a plurality of sets of guide grooves having different lengths and widths are provided in the locking area to serve for guiding a plurality of memory cards of different standards. There are at least four types of memory card standards, and any one of the four types of memory cards is fitted into the locking section by the guide of one set of the guide grooves and is fixed in the first slot. , The signal can be transmitted to the circuit board in the main body after the memory card is fixed, the first slot and the transmission unit are connected between the computer system and the main body, and the IDE / ATAPI system interface standard is adopted, and the memory card Is inserted into the main body from the entrance of the first slot, and after the circuit board in the main body reads the file stored in the memory card, the transmission unit performs bidirectional transmission with the computer system. It is characterized by a multi-type memory card drive. According to a second aspect of the present invention, the four types of memory cards are SMC, MMC, MS and S.
The multi-type memory card drive according to claim 1, wherein the multi-type memory card drive is a D card. According to a third aspect of the present invention, the multi-type memory card drive according to the first aspect is characterized in that the transmission unit is a USB system interface standard, and the main body can be externally connected to a computer system or other digital products. I am trying. In the invention of claim 4, the transmission unit is defined as a 13494 system interface standard,
The multi-type memory card drive according to claim 1, wherein the main body can be externally connected to a computer system or other digital products.
According to the invention of claim 5, a second slot inlet is separately provided at the front end of the main body, a second slot is provided at a portion corresponding to the second slot inlet inside, and a locking section is provided at an intermediate portion of the second slot. At least three sets of the locking sections are provided,
A guide groove is provided for guiding insertion and fixing of any one type of memory card of PC card type 1, type 2 and type 3, and transmitting a signal to a circuit board in the main body. The multi-type memory card drive described in 1. The invention of claim 6 is characterized in that two sets of guide grooves of the second slot are provided and used for guiding a memory card of two types of standards, CF card type 1 and type 2. The multi-type memory card drive described in.

[0010]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT The present invention provides a kind of multi-type memory card drive, which can insert existing SMS, MMC, MS and SD cards of similar size into a single entry slot, CF card type. 1, type 2 or PC card type 1, type 2 and type 3 can be inserted into another single slot, which allows you to read the file data of any memory card and ID
By designing to support the E / ATAPI, USB or 1394 transmission unit, all memory cards currently in circulation can be inserted into and read from the memory card drive of the above single or double slot design.

[0011]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT As shown in FIG. 1, a multi-type memory card drive of the present invention is a computer system 10.
Alternatively, it can be built into other digital products, and its composition requirements include the main body 20, the first slot 30, the second slot 40, and the transmission unit 50.

The main body 20 is designed in a rectangular shape so that the main body 20 can be fitted into the computer system 10 or other digital products, and has a housing space inside to house a circuit board and other electronic components, and its front end. Is provided with a first slot inlet 21 and a second slot inlet 22,
In addition, the first slot entrance 21 and the second slot entrance 22 are located at the outer edge of the computer system 10, and the memory card 60 is inserted into the first slot entrance 21 and the second slot entrance 22.
It is more convenient to insert into the main body 20. In addition, the first slot 30 corresponds to the first slot inlet 2 in the main body 20.
1 and the second slot 40 is provided in the main body 20 at a position corresponding to the second slot entrance 22. Therefore, the memory card 60 is provided in the first slot entrance 2
When the main body 20 is inserted through the first or second slot inlet 22, it is connected to the first slot 30 or the second slot 40.

As shown in FIG. 2, the first slot 30
Is a horizontal U shape, and the middle part of the
In addition, the locking area 31 is provided with at least four sets of guide grooves 32 having different lengths and widths to guide the SMC, MMC, MS and SD cards whose dimensions are close to each other in the memory card 60. Used in the memory card 60 of the above-mentioned four types of standards (only one type is shown in the figure), and is guided by a set of guide grooves 32 among them. It is fitted in the locking area 31 and fixed to the first slot 30. After the memory card 60 is fixed to the first slot 30, the signal can be transmitted to the circuit board provided in the main body.

As shown in FIG. 3, the second slot 40
Has a shape similar to that of the first slot 30, and includes a locking region 31 and
Although a plurality of sets of guide grooves 32 having different lengths and widths are provided, the guide grooves 32 located in the second slots 40 have the same length and width but different thicknesses of PC card type 1, type 2, And used to guide the type 3 memory card 60 (only one type is shown in the figure),
In addition, the memory card 60 having one type of thickness is fixed to the second slot 40. Similarly, memory card 6
After 0 is fixed in the second slot 40, a signal can be transmitted to the circuit board provided in the main body.

Please refer to FIG. 1 again. The transmission unit 50 described above includes the computer system 10 and the main body 20.
The memory card 60 is inserted into the main body 20 through the first slot entrance 21 or the second slot entrance 22, and then the circuit board provided in the main body 20 is used as a memory. The file stored in the card 60 is read and transmitted by the transmission unit 50 to the computer system 10, and the data transmitted by the computer system 10 is also transmitted by the transmission unit 50 to the memory card 6.
0 to be stored and thus perform read and write operations on the memory card 60.

It should be noted that the entity 20 shown in FIG. 1 is built into the computer system 10 or other digital product so that its transmission unit 50.
Is the IDE / ATAPI system interface standard (which is a well known technique). IDE / ATAPI
The transmission unit 50 of the system interface standard has a built-in process as a principle in design. IDE / ATAPI
With the support of the computer system 10, each single wiring mostly processes two different sets of signals (depending on its defining Master Master, Slave Slave structure), that is, a general three-slot, four-slot memory card drive as well. Although it can be designed to support the IDE / ATAPI system interface standard, in use, in use, this drive can only support cards of two different standards, the insertion order being the first and the second. If the memory card signal cannot be processed and it is severe, it freezes.

However, the design of the first slot and the second slot of the present invention complies with this standard definition, and the first slot 30 and the second slot 40 of the present invention allow the insertion of memory cards 60 of various different standards. However, only one type of memory card 60 can be inserted at a time, and only two types of memory card 60 can be inserted at the same time when used. Therefore, the well-known three-slot and four-slot memory cards described above are used. It is possible to avoid the problem of freeze caused by a signal when a memory card of the third type transfer is inserted in the drive.

In other words, the present invention has a wider usable space than the known three-slot and four-slot memory card drives (the present invention is SMC, MM).
C, MS, SD card and PC card Type 1, type 2 and type 3 memory cards of seven types are allowed to be inserted, whereas the well-known three-slot and forlot are only three types and 4 Only allowed the types),
Moreover, the present invention is the best advantage of the present invention because it does not cause a confusion or a situation in which three or more memory cards are inserted at the same time to cause a freeze.

Further, as shown in the embodiment of the present invention shown in FIGS. 1 to 3, when the present invention is carried out, the main body 2
0 can be built directly into the computer system 10 or other digital product and used in combination with existing computer systems or other digital products. When implementing the present invention, the transmission unit 50 is
By designing to the SB or 1394 system interface standard (see FIG. 4), the main body 20 can be externally connected to the existing computer and used for reading and writing the memory card.

As shown in FIG. 5, when the present invention is carried out, the present invention is not limited to the double slot, but basically, the main slot 20 is provided with the first slot inlet 21, the first slot 30 and the transmission unit 50. And at least SM
The four types of memory cards 60 of C, MMC, MS and SD cards can be read and written.

Besides, the above-mentioned second slot is designed in conformity with three kinds of standards of PC card type 1, type 2 and type 3, and its principle structure is the same, so that its explanation is omitted.

The above-mentioned names of the respective parts are defined for explaining the technical contents of the present invention, and do not limit the scope of the claims of the present invention, and changes or modifications that can be made in the spirit of the present invention are not limited. All of them belong to the claims of the present invention.

[0023]

The present invention is built in or externally connected to a computer system or other digital products, and can read and write memory cards of various standards with a single or double slot, satisfying the demands of various consumer groups, In addition, the present invention provides a multi-type memory card drive which solves the drawback that the memory card drive has a design of three slots or more and is apt to be confused, mistaken and damaged in the known technology.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an exploded perspective view of a first embodiment built in a computer system of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a perspective view of the first slot of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a perspective view of a second slot of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a perspective view of a second embodiment circumscribed by the computer system of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a perspective view of a third embodiment of the present invention in which a first slot is provided.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 computer system 20 main body 21 first slot inlet 22 second slot inlet 30 first slot 31 locking area 32 guide groove 40 second slot 50 transmission unit 60 memory card

Claims (6)

[Claims] 1. A main body, which is built in a computer system or other digital products, has an accommodation space inside, accommodates a circuit board and other electronic components in the accommodation space, and has a first slot entrance at the front end. The provided memory card can be inserted into the main body through the first slot entrance,
The main body and the first slot are provided at a position corresponding to the first slot entrance in the main body, and an intermediate portion thereof is a locking section,
A plurality of sets of guide grooves whose lengths and widths do not match are provided in the locking section to guide a plurality of memory cards of different standards. There are at least four types of memory card standards and four types of memory card standards are provided. Any one type of memory card can be inserted into the locking section by the guide of the set of the guide grooves and fixed to the first slot, and after the memory card is fixed, the signal can be transmitted to the circuit board in the main body. The first slot and the transmission unit are connected to each other between the computer system and the main body, and the IDE / ATAPI system interface standard is adopted. The memory card is inserted into the main body through the first slot entrance, and the circuit board in the main body is inserted. After the file stored in the memory card is read, the transmission unit performs bidirectional transmission with the computer system. And it said that there were example, multi-type memory card drive. 2. The four types of memory cards are SMC,
The multi-type memory card drive according to claim 1, wherein the multi-type memory card drive is an MMC, MS and SD card. 3. The multi-type memory card drive according to claim 1, wherein the transmission unit is a USB system interface standard, and the main body is externally connectable to a computer system or other digital products. 4. The multi-type memory card drive according to claim 1, wherein the transmission unit is based on a 13494 system interface standard and can be externally connected to a computer system or other digital products. 5. A second slot inlet is separately provided at the front end of the main body, a second slot is provided at a portion corresponding to the second slot inlet inside, and a locking section is provided at an intermediate portion of the second slot. , A PC with at least 3 sets of the locking areas
A guide groove for guiding and inserting and fixing any one type of memory card of card type 1, type 2 and type 3 is provided, and a signal is transmitted to a circuit board in the main body. Multi-type memory card drive described in. 6. The guide slot of the second slot is provided in two sets and is used for guiding a memory card of two types of standards, CF card type 1 and type 2. Multi-type memory card drive.