I have just put Ubuntu 9.04 on an Acer Travelmate 8000. The multicard reader is not recognised. Is there a fix?

Try to find out a little more than that. It's not enough information for anyone to help you.

The only specs I can find are:

4-in-1 PCMCIA Multimedia reader. It may be Acer's own model

Here's a few ways to find out more. Use sudo on these, and I won't bother typing it.

lspci -v |less
lsusb -v |less
lspcmcia -v |less

Will show you what's on the buses. We'd like to see all the bit about your card reader Post if you find something.
If you find what the thing is called, try these. Let's call it reader for these examples

Then dmesg | grep -i reader
cat /var/log/messages |grep -i reader

Here is where the kernel wakes it up, decides to use it, complains, or tells it to go back to sleep. Post what you find of relevance

See attached responses to the sudo instructions. Next step did not work, but could be I chose the wrong "reader".

Attached Files

linuxquestions - card reader.pdf (128.7 KB, 18 views)

Socket 2 Device 0: [no driver ]
(bus ID: 2.0)
Configuration:state: on
Product Name: O2Micro SmartCardBus Reader V1.0
Identification: manf_id: 0xffff card_id: 0x0001
prod_id(1): "O2Micro" (0x97299583)
prod_id(2): "SmartCardBus Reader" (0xb8501ba9)
prod_id(3): "V1.0" (0xe611e659)
prod_id(4): ( )

You sure get a lot of crap from your usb bus! That's the thing, isn't it? It's on the pcmcia bus. To get that talking, I think you need
1. To have the kernel talking to the pc card bus (previously pcmcia bus). This much is good, with yenta_socket as the kernel module.
2 A Specific driver (kernel module usually)for the card.
3. An options file in /etc

My reading on that is many years out of date and plug'n'play may come to your rescue. Try googling for the others. This thread really belongs on a laptop forum.