In the topic -
"Before you post: What to include in a Hardware question."

it says to use "/sbin/cardctl ident" for info on pcmcia cards
and "/sbin/lspci" for info on cardbus cards. Back in 2003.

I have before me a pcmcia ethernet card plugged into my laptop. Dmesg just says "pcnet_cs", and the card just works.

"cardctl" is not found on my full install of slackware 15. Lspci does not show this pcmcia card.

It works without udev ever detecting it. Ethtool just says "no data available". But it does work, as well as can be expected.

I would like to get more information about what linux knows about this card. It must know something in order to successfully be using it. But how to gather the information?

There are a few issues. One is how that pcmcia adapter connects to host. They tend to be on a daughter card and that has to be supported. Second is the drive and software support for those. Most of that has been removed. Might try a V4 Knoppix maybe or some other from that time.

lspci won't show it.

BeOs and maybe QNX had support for some. I know one of the QNX floppies had support for one model.

Please, give a little bit more information about affected hardware (laptop).

PCMCIA has nothing to do with PCI. Therefore lspci can not show anything about PCMCIA cards.

Slackware 15.0 may be too new for your hardware. Check if used kernel comes with PCMCIA support: Device drivers ---> PCCard (PCMCIA/CardBus) support. Because PCMCIA & CardBus are obsolete since many years you may need to build a kernel with support for this.

The issue with pcmcia is that, like the ISA bus, the talking was done in 16 bit wide buses. 64bit software is uncomfortable with that.

If you have no luck with other suggestions, you might install a 32bit OS which might be better at that. Or you might decide that it's too much of a PITA to resurrect PCMCIA for a low performance antique pcmcia card. There was a 32bit version, but IIRC it never really took off.

FYI, Slackware has /sbin/lspcmcia, which might tell you something. It's good to know it exists anyhow.

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As I was trying to describe in my opening post, the pcnet_cs card does seem to be supported and functional in Slackware15, just sort of "terse"/anti-verbosely with the system showing less than average info about it.

Yes, "lspcmcia" does seem to work.

And instead of "cardctl ident" which the pinned "Before you post" mentions, the command is now "pccardctl ident". Maybe the pinned post should be updated?

I was able to get identifying info of the card. It is a "Linksys etherfast 10/100 pcm100" which counts as a ne2000 clone using a "dl10022 ver5" chipset.

It came out of some old things from storage, price zero. Before dismissing it as worthless old junk - it serves my immediate needs from the linux side of my dual boot laptop, I just need another ethernet port to connect my Raspberry dns server to. 100base-T/fdx is good enough.

A few days ago I purchased a cheap Asix usb-ethernet adapter, only to discover that it draws so much power from the (weak) usb ports on this laptop that I need to give it it's own powered usb hub or else it destabilizes the system. Yet another item to clutter up my workspace.

But the olde Linksys pcmcia card appears to be unsupported from the windows side of my dual boot laptop. Windows does still support some pcmcia cards, just not that one. So in the end, it is not useful to me.