Assistance with PCMCIA Wireless in Zenwalk 7.2
 

Greetings,
First post here. While I have 15+ years as a support tech, network admin, etc. in the Windows world, I am a relative noob here, so bear with me if I miss something obvious or use incorrect terminology.

I have successfully installed Zenwalk 6.4 (slackware 2.6.3 kernel) on an ancient PIII, and can access the network perfectly via a PCMCIA card (Linksys WPC55AG.) using the ATH5K driver.

However, when I dual boot into Zenwalk 7.2 (slackware 3.48 kernel), I get nothing. LSMOD doesn't even show PCMCIA_CORE running. I have checked that /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia is bootable, and have even manually started it, but I get no response to any card inserted in the slots. No notification from the OS, no lights on the card.

I would be happy to provide more info, I just don't know what is relevent. :-)

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Gary

The file rc.pcmcia needs to be executable, not sure what you mean by bootable. This file is a script. In a terminal, do a 'ls -l /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia' ( without the quotes ). The executable bits should be set.

If you get this :

the executable bits are not set. Then run as root, the command 'chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia'. That will set all three executable bits on. Then boot the system, and see if that makes a difference.

It has been a while since I had a system old enough to have pcmcia cards, so I'm a little rusty....

Thanks for the reply, cliff. Sorry for the terminology error, I was typing fast and misspoke, so to speak. I meant that it was executable. I verified +x and performed both a chmod and used the startup apps program in the OS. I tried turning off the attribute and back on again and no change.

I also installed SalixOS 13 (slackware variant by an ex Zenwalk dev) and it detected the card fine.

I have a working system now, so this isn't critical, but I have always hated "giving up" when something doesn't work. :-)

I will triple check the attribute again to be sure.

Thanks again,
Gary