F-16s still use PCMCIA cards to load targeting data. They have enough space, they work fine, they're not too big, and they're not too small. You really don't want to be trying to insert an SD card while wearing gloves in cold weather.
I always liked PCMCIA slots -- you could add a whole bunch of different features to your machine in a fairly compact format. It's sad that laptops ditched them so long ago
They just went smaller - Thunderbolt implements PCIe [1] under the hood. You can connect graphics cards over TB, for example.
[1] It actually implements three protocols that it can switch between based on endpoint negotiation - PCIe, DisplayPort, and in its latest version USB 3.1.
I had that Apple powerbook G3 that had two hot swap bays for batteries/hard drives/media players AND a PCMCIA slot. Oh, and built-in ethernet. I remember adding Firewire support via PCMCIA. Good times.
As far as I know the only type still in common use is CableCard, which I believe your cable company is legally obliged to support, and enables things like Tivo and HDHomeRun to work.
I have a fond memory of my older brother buying an Orinoco card and putting it in his laptop and then us cruising around town wardriving back in the day
Wardriving was driving around town with a laptop scanning for WiFi access points without any encryption. Most wardrivers would have a GPS card and software that’d build a map up as you drive of all SSIDs and locations, which could be uploaded and contributed to by others.
This was back before ubiquitous open WiFi and encryption.
Ergo, there was a period from ~1999-2004 whereby one could aim a Pringles cantenna at a neighbor's AP and crack their WEP password in order-of-an-evening (depending on how much traffic they were generating).
They’re great cards and easy to write drivers for. I still use one in one of my thinkpads for wireless because it used to be the only card supported by 9front and plan 9 back in the day.
They could have just changed the form factor of the connector and card and used the regular SD(XC) protocol and wiring rather than going back to an old technology for the whole thing.
