Although originally designed as a standard for memory-expansion cards for computer storage, the existence of a usable general standard for notebook peripherals led to the development of many kinds of devices including network cards, modems, and hard disks.

Some Japanese brand consumer entertainment devices such as TV sets include a PC Card slot for playback of media.

The company was the first to introduce a writeable Flash RAM card for the HP 95LX (an early MS-DOS pocket computer).

These cards conformed to a supplemental PCMCIA-ATA standard that allowed them to appear as more conventional IDE hard drives to the 95LX or a PC.

[7] It also needed interrupt facilities and hot plugging, which required the definition of new BIOS and operating system interfaces.

[7][8] To recognize increased scope beyond memory, and to aid in marketing, the association acquired the rights to the simpler term "PC Card" from IBM.

It was intended to add some forward compatibility with USB and IEEE 1394, but was not universally adopted and only some notebooks have PC Card controllers with CardBay features.

ExpressCard is a later specification from the PCMCIA, intended as a replacement for PC Card, built around the PCI Express and USB 2.0 standards.

The PC Card standard is closed to further development and PCMCIA strongly encourages future product designs to utilize the ExpressCard interface.

[19] ExpressCard-to-CardBus and Cardbus-to-ExpressCard adapters are available that connect a Cardbus card to an Expresscard slot, or vice versa, and carry out the required electrical interfacing.

PC Card devices can be plugged into an ExpressCard adaptor, which provides a PCI-to-PCIe Bridge.

Despite being much faster in speed/bandwidth, ExpressCard was not as popular as PC Card, due in part to the ubiquity of USB ports on modern computers.

Some IBM ThinkPad laptops took their onboard RAM (in sizes ranging from 4 to 16 MB) in the factor of an IC-DRAM Card.

The shape is also used by the Common Interface form of conditional-access modules for DVB, and by Panasonic for their professional "P2" video acquisition memory cards.

A CableCARD conditional-access module is a type II PC Card intended to be plugged into a cable set-top box or digital cable-ready television.