card information structure (CIS)

Card Information Structure(CIS) is information about the internal data structure of PC cards.

The CIS information is stored as firmware on the CP cards and then read out as soon as a PCMCIA card or PC card is inserted into a personal computer. They contain the way of formatting and organization of the data on the PC-Card, furthermore the card type, it can be a memory extension, network or modem card or an interface card, and the information about the bus width, the manufacturer, model numbers etc.. The CIS information is organized in so-called tuples, which are finite lists.