Fedora 5 Won't Fully Activate 3Com PCMCIA Card
 

Hello all,

I installed Fedora 5 on a Dell Latitude laptop. The laptop is using a 3Com Megahertz combo card model 3ccfem556b.

Problem: The card is recognized, I can do a "ifup/down eth0" it is successful, I can see it in the network config GUI, but if I try do a "service network restart" or try to activate it from the GUI it fails and says the card does not exist...

NOTE: I'm going to ask my question first in case you have the answer, then you don't need to read the boaring details...

Question: Has anyone been able to get this model of 3Com card to work?
Does anyone know where I can get a driver that will work with FC5 and the card?

More details:
I do have the laptop dual booting with Win2K3 which has no problem with the card or DHCP registration so I know the NIC and network/internet connection is good.

I've tried a few things,

1) Edited the config.opts inserting:

include port 0x100-0x4ff, port 0xc00-0xcff
include memory 0xc0000-0xfffff
include memory 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff, memory 0x60000000-0x60ffffff
include memory 0xe0100000-0xe17fffff
include port 0x3000-0x7fff

2) I've enabled the Network Manager, although once completed I can activate the card but no light or network connection, even if I remove the card, leading me to think that the driver is not installed:

Enabling NetworkManager on Fedora 5
The installation process for Fedora Core 5 automatically provides NetworkManager. To enable it, enter the following commands in a terminal window:

Set the main service to automatically start on boot: su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManager on'

Set the dispatcher service to automatically start on boot: su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManagerDispatcher on'

Start the services: su -c '/sbin/service NetworkManager start ; /sbin/service NetworkManagerDispatcher start'

3) I have removed the card and inserted a Orinoco wireless card which Fedora will see and light up the LED..I don't have an AP near to test the wireless but since the LED is lit I would guess it would since I cna't even get a light to come on when the dongle is connected to the 3Com card.

4) Reinstalled without customizing during the install just for kicks.....


TIA!!

Tony

Check your /etc/pcmcia/config file do you have the entires for the card;

Also check for the 3CXEM556.dat file in /etc/pcmcia/cis

Check your /etc/modprobe.conf file, do you have entry like;

alias eth0 3c589_cs

Do you even have the 3c589_cs and serial_cs modules???

ls -al /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/pcmcia

ls -al /lib/modules/2.6.16.17/`uname -r`/drivers/serial

That's the backtick (by the Esc key) and not the single quotemark (by the Enter key) in the two commands above.

If yes to all then insert the card and have a look at the end of the var/log/messages file.

Fedora 5 Won't Fully Activate 3Com PCMCIA Card
 

Thank you for the responce Lenard!!

I do not have any of those you listed, I figured this card would work since the previous fersions of FC worked fine....

There is no directory called cis.

alias only has, 3c574_cs for eth0 and 3c59y for eth1

and the last part is also no.

I've been trying to get this to work for work I have to do this weekend...

I really thank you for the help!!

Tony

Then as a suggestion download the old pcmcia-cs tar file;

http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/

Use this to replenish the missing /etc/pcmcia/cis files. Just copy the extracted contents of ../pcmcia-cs-3.2.8/etc/cis to your /etc/pcmcia location (as root).

The latest FC5 kernel does have the modules needed, so once done the pcmcia card should work. You might have to create a line entry in the /etc/modprobe.conf file
like; alias eth2 3c589_cs

$ rpm -qlip kernel-2.6.16-1.2122_FC5.i686.rpm | grep 3c58
warning: kernel-2.6.16-1.2122_FC5.i686.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
/lib/modules/2.6.16-1.2122_FC5/kernel/drivers/net/pcmcia/3c589_cs.ko

$ rpm -qlip kernel-2.6.16-1.2122_FC5.i686.rpm | grep serial_cs
warning: kernel-2.6.16-1.2122_FC5.i686.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
/lib/modules/2.6.16-1.2122_FC5/kernel/drivers/serial/serial_cs.ko



And I'm bad, I wrote;

ls -al /lib/modules/2.6.16.17/`uname -r`/drivers/serial

which should have been;

ls -al /lib/modules/`uname -r`/drivers/serial

sorry.

Thank you Lenard,

For some reason that didn't do it, I thought for sure we had it but still no connection, it still says:

"FAILED: 3c574_cs device eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying instalation".

I went through the steps a few times to make sure I did them correctly...Not sure where to go from here...


I'm going to beat on this for a while longer and hope that there is a solution out there somewhere, I've been fighting this for a week now and out of the posts I've made in different forums you're the only one to respond. I'll go back to FC4 if FD5 can't handle locating the card, FC4 worked fine with this card.... I'd prefer not but I have to get this work done this weekend.

Thanks again for the help Lenard


Thank you!

I couldn't get it to work at all on FD5, I went back to FD4 but that it won't work ther either, it will not get the gateway IP and when I try to add the route I receive an error SIOCADDRT:Network is unreachable.

I know without a doubt this card is good, I can boot into WindoZ, remove the card and driver, wipe it from the registry, reboot, insert the card and it finds and acivates it every time....I can load an old RedHat and it works...
It has been weeks and still no one can come up with a way to get a card working in a new distro that an old version of RedHat sees and WindoZ sees every time ...Just extreamly frustrating with the whole thing...

Please excuse the rant...I really don't want to use Windoz or replace a perfecly good card...

Tony