I guess PCMCIA was kind of like this. Of course dongles were bigger back then.

girvo · on Sept 22, 2021

Man I loved the idea of PCMCIA back in the day. Mobile network access (EDGE, if I remember correctly) via one of them on my chunky Toshiba was awesome.

toyg · on Sept 22, 2021

I was fascinated by PCMCIA, because I had a laptop I was trying to put OpenBSD on it in 2001 and its ethernet port was not working, so the card was a workaround. I always wondered why it didn't really take off in Europe, it was a simple and pretty compact way (for the time) to get very advanced stuff in a laptop - I guess it was expensive to produce and the name was atrocious. I believe it got more popular in Japan.