Hello everybody,

I installed Fedora core 3 on my old laptop (Toshiba Satellite 2100 CDT) and here are the problems I am having:

-everytime I plug in my PCMCIA ethernet card (Xircom RealPort) the system locks, this happens if I plug it in when the system is booted or before booting it.

-I have a similar problem with my USB port.

-The speakers dont work

During booting I have the following message:

-disabling IRQ #11

I really hope someone can help, specially for the PCMCIA problem, because without it I cannot log on internet and check for the other problems.

Thank you!

Efo

check the cardbus mode in the system BIOS.... also make sure you have pcmcia and cardbus support built into the kernel.

I have a satellite as well. My linksys card did that as well.

Thanks hostprotect,

I already changed the BIOS setting to cardbus 16-bit and I also updated it to v.7.30, but it didnt work. So far I tried Fedora core 3, Vector, Gentoo, UBUNTU. Everytime that network is started everything freezes, it seems to start the PCMCIA bus fine but as soon as I plug in my xircom REM56G-100 or my Netgear MA401 it freezes right away. I tried to put some PCMCIA USB card in and it doesnt freeze. I start thinking there may be something wrong with the bus driver?

This is driving me crazy, I keep trying different linux but it seems like the result doesnt change.

Please help!!!!!

Thank you

Efo

Did you compile 16bit cardbus support into the kernel ?

I'm running slackware 10 and I am using my linksys.


I had a previous 10/100 linksys card and after a few years it fried .

there are also some options for Xircom network devices in the kern config.

Found it!
Apparently there was a conflict between the ethernet or wireless PCMCIA card and the internal modem. I disabled the internal modem from the BIOS and now it works fine in UBUNTU. Now I will try to reinstall Fedora cora 3.

Thanks for helping me out.

Efo

Good night guys...

I thik that your problem is the Interrupt Request number assigned to the PCI devices in the BIOS configuration of your notebook.
I had a similar problem when I installed a PCMCIA USB card... all the PCI devices had the same IRQ number (11 by default) and when I insert the PCMIA card the Ethernet and the USB were disabled. To solve this I have assigned a different IRQ number for each PCI device in the BIOS configuration (IRQ9, IRQ10, IRQ11 and IRQ15) and now all the devices work properly.

I hope this can help to you.

Thanks dariosilvestre, that's a good thing to keep in mind for the future. Right now my PCMCIA card has ethernet and modem in it, so I dont really need the internal modem of the laptop. So far I am happy with it and it works great with the internal modem disabled.

Thanks again

Efo

I have the same problem but I cannot disable anything in BIOS...

How are you trying to disable it?

Here is what I did:
-press "esc" at the statup
-press "F1" (when asked)
-press "pgdn" to go to the second page of the BIOS
-use arrows to go on the internal modem line
-press "space bar" untill it results disabled
-press "end" to save and exit

I saw that people had some problem with the pcmcia configuration, so since you are there (second page of BIOS) why dont you change it from automatic to 16-bit cardbus.

Hope this help.

Efo

I can't do that in my BIOS, no such options.

It's a Packard Bell laptop btw.

Oh, I thought you had the same laptop.

The problem may not be in the BIOS then, it could be a driver problem. Try to use a different version of Linux, Fedora worked out well for me.
Did you check out if somebody has this problem on the same notebook or PCMCIA card?

ciao

Efo