1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a small electronic card, and, more particularly, to a small electronic card with peripheral contacts.
2. Description of the Related Art
Development in electronic technology has accelerated the growth of many types of portable computing products, such as notebooks, palm computers and PDAs; and various types of commercial electronic products, such as digital cameras, digital video players and MP3 players. In general, both portable computing products and commercial electronic products may utilize a small memory card for data storage, and other types of small electronic cards for peripheral functions, such as network cards or modem cards.
A prior art technique provides a small electronic card with a single line of contacts, which generally does not provide a sufficient number of contacts for interfacing purposes.
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Therefore, it is desirable to provide a small electronic card with peripheral contacts to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.
A main objective of the present invention is to provide a small electronic card with peripheral contacts, which provides more contacts without affecting the design of the reader.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide a small electronic card with peripheral contacts, which can prevent short circuit caused by pins touching incorrect contacts.
To achieve the objective, a small electronic card with peripheral contacts capable of being inserted into a reader is provided, which comprises: a body having a front end and two side edges, the two side edges facing each other and disposed behind two sides of the front end, the body being inserted into the reader from the front end; a plurality of front end contacts placed along the front end of the body; and a plurality of extended contacts placed along the two side edges, wherein every side edge has at least one extended contact.
Furthermore, the reader has a plurality of pins placed which are placed at positions corresponding to the side edges of the body, and are used for electrically connecting to the front end contacts and a plurality of extended contacts of the small electronic card.
Other objects, advantages, and novel features of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
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The small electronic card 51 with the extended contacts 59 can provide sufficient contacts to improve the performance of the card 51. In this embodiment, the front end contacts 58 of the small electronic card 51 are used to provide standard power, data, address and control connections, similar, for example, to the contacts 411 of the standard MS memory card 41. The extended contacts 59 of the small electronic card 51 are used for extending a number of data transmission contacts to raise the data transmission bandwidth. Furthermore, the extended contacts 59 can also be used to provide I/O functionality, as well as extended data connections.
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The small electronic card 51 of this embodiment is compatible with the MS memory card 41, and thus, in addition to be inserted into a corresponding reader 65, it can also be inserted into a standard MS card slot. Moreover, the small electronic card 51 of the present invention can also be made compatible with other standard electronic cards, such as MMC cards, and SD cards. Please refer to
In view of the foregoing, it is known that the present invention primarily utilizes the extended contacts 79 along the two side edges to extend the total number of contacts to increase the data transmission bandwidth, and thus the data transmission speed. The arrangement of the extended contacts 79 does not affect the design of the reader, while preventing short circuit caused by pins 83 touching incorrect contacts 79.
Although the present invention has been explained in relation to its preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that many other possible modifications and variations can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as hereinafter claimed.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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093100266 | Jan 2004 | TW | national |