PCMCIA etherfast (Linksys), not recognized
 

May I have your help?

I installed Slackware 12.2 in this laptop (N30N3-15, a noname one).

However, it does not recognize my old Etherfast 10/100 PC Card PCMPC100 -- dmesg does not show any eth1, no driver is loaded. (eth0 is a fried internal conector; tulip recognizes eth0, ADMtek Comet, irq11, mmio 0xe8004c00).

dmesg knows something is inserted or ejected:
pccard: card ejected from slot 1

modprobe pcnet_cs
loads the driver (and 8390) but dmesg says nothing about eth1.

modprobe pcnet_cs io=0x300 irq=3
complains about not recognizing "io" options.

If I run the computer with a Puppy Linux live cd, the etherfast is recognized is recognized as eth1, and uses the pcnet_cs driver, io 0x300 and irq 3. It works.

I used to have this same card in an older laptop, running Slackware 10.1, and it ran beautifully (however, I forgot if I had to add some parameters at boot time). Same in an old thinkpad running netbsd, it just works.

And I remember now that I tried to install Debian on that first older laptop; the card worked during the instalation, but after that it did not work anymore.

Please tell me what should I do to deal with the problem.

First question:
is /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia executable? (check with ls -l /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia)

Second:
Check with lsmod if the module is really loaded.

You might have to set an option in the modprobe line.

<edit>
actually, create a file called pcnet in /etc/modprobe.d/ with the following contents:
</edit>

That's a better way to set the options for every time you load the pcnet_cs module.

"
is /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia executable? (check with ls -l /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia)"

It is executable:
-rwxr-xr-x

"Second: Check with lsmod if the module is really loaded.
(...) create a file called pcnet in /etc/modprobe.d/ with the following contents:
"

/etc/modprobe.d/pcnet_cs created.

After reboot, dmesg shows no evidence of the card being found.

When
# modprobe pcnet_cs
FATAL: Error inserting pcnet_cs (...) Unknown symbol in modeule, or unknown parameters (see dmesg).

dmesg says:
pcnet_cs: Unknown parameter `io'.