Are there any 3G cards that fit in a Mikrotik Routerboard MiniPCI slot?
-tp
After speaking to a few 3G card disti’s the consensus is that mini-pci is dead in new designs and they are moving to support mini-pci-e instead.
also you have to note, that there must be a SIM slot somewhere, and as it’s usually not on the card, but on the board somewhere, this makes it most of the cards impossible to use in RB.
Good point Normis. This 3G router area appears to be quite a potentially large emerging market segment…
we support quite a large number of USB 3G devices and we will also look into the miniPCI-e standard
USB is a bit like mini-pci-e. Missing to date. Looking forward to seeing a low cost unit with one or the other fitted.
http://www.adaptivemodules.co.uk/index.cfm/fa/shopdetails/Product_ID/720
apologies for the length of time this question has gone unanswered satisfactorily, but it’s so hard to find this kind of kit that i thought it best to post and make people aware that yes, there exists an actual product which does 3G in Mini-PCI (type III).
for £130 (qty 1) you get an H24 (3G, HSDPA) Telit modem already on-board. photo clearly shows a SIM card slot. my guess is that it’s nothing more complex than a USB-to-PCI (or maybe RS232-to-PCI) bridge IC on the circuit board.
i’ve not asked about the volume pricing yet.
l.
miniPCI slots on the RouterBOARD devices don’t have all features required to support any type of device. they accept only miniPCI wireless cards. for 3G you must use miniPCIe slots or USB
http://www.adaptivem2m.com/datasheets/g24-pci/g24-mini-pci-adapter-technical-manual.pdf
it’s an oxford semiconductors quad 16550 UART PCI bridge chip, which is supported by CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_PCI in at least linux kernel 2.6.27, up to 115200 (230kbps can be done with a patch to setserial). that document also describes how to use the card on freebsd.
apparently also standard minipci audio is supported so you could do voice calls as well.
l.