Trouble installing PCMCIA card
 

I am trying to install an IBM EtherJet PCMCIA card in my IBM ThinkPad 600x using Slackware 8.1. I recompiled my kernel with PCMCIA support and the driver it's supposed to use (tulip_cb), and compiled pcmcia-cs 3.2.4, and the rc.pcmcia file seems to start the cardmgr fine, but I'm confused as to how to get Slackware to recognize the card. Anything I try with cardctl tells me there's no product information available. How can I get this card to be recognized?

if you try to load the tulip_cb module manually, does it work?

modprobe tulip_cb (as root) gives you what?

Well, I need to modprobe pcmcia_core first, but otherwise modprobe tulip_cb works fine (prints nothing).

does slackware have commands like 'ifup eth0' or anything?

I mean if both modules load ok, I'd try to see if the card responds at this point.

I have found that when you're using a fairly recent cardbus card, /etc/pcmcia/config, cardctl and friends won't be able to help you too much, iwconfig still works though. lspci -vv, lspci -n, /usr/share/pci.ids, and your /etc/modules.conf file will. Cardctl still functions as an eject/insert mechanism but that's about it outside of "cardctl status" which will reveal the card's voltage and type.

I've recently gotten my D-Link DWL-650 version2 card, which is a wireless cardbus to work on my tp 600 and learned a few things in the process. (one is that D-link likes to change chipsets without changing model numbers, grrrr!)

slackware (at least as of my version: 8.0) does not use the same /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX scheme that you'll find in mandrake and redhat. You'll need to look at the files /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 and/or /etc/rc.d/rc.inet2 for places to put your particular network numbers.

I would try to manually config this card before adding anything to the startup files, here's how I would do it:
1. do an ifconfig -a and see if a device has been registered for it.
2. if so, do an ifconfig eth0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx where the x's are a valid ip address for your network.
3. do a route add default gw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx eth0 where the x's are the ip address of your local router to the internet, if you have one.

("eth0" represents the device name returned from ifconfig -a, which should have the MAC address of your card listed in it.)

if the ifconfig -a returns nothing but a listing for "lo", you've got problems and we'll take it from there.

No, all it has is "lo". :(

Assuming the ifconfig with the "-a" option turns up nothing, it's time to see if you have any socket drivers loaded, you need to do a dmesg and scan for the area where it says "Linux Kernel Card Services", see if any errors got reported at bootup. Next, after you manually modprobe pcmcia_core, what other modules get loaded with it, eg: ds, yenta_socket, etc? just after you load pcmcia_core and just after you load tulip_cb, do a tail -n 20 /var/log/messages and check for errors, alternatively, what I like to do is bring up a separate console window and do a tail -f /var/log/messages and watch what gets logged as I type commands into a different console window. One more thing, when you plug this etherjet in/out are you hearing any beeps from the computer?

ps: with the card plugged in, do a cardctl status, and see if the card is even recognized as being in the slot, it should return something like "3.3v CardBus..." under one of the slot numbers.

THere are no errors for the card services in dmesg, but it says version 3.1.33 even though I installed pcmcia-cs 3.2.4, so could that be a reason? The tail command just tells me the same thing as dmesg for pcmcia_core, and nothing for tulip_cb. When I plug in the card, there are no beeps, and with 'cardctl status' it doesn't even recognize it as being in the slot :(

It would seem to me at this point that something went wrong with your kernel compile. I am wondering why you needed to compile a new kernel for slack8.1, I would think the default kernel would have had pcmcia support already in it. What caused you do the kernel compile?

I'm guessing that the current state of your system is out-of-sync. Can you fall back to the slackware kernel you were using before recompiling? What kernel version does slack 8.1 ship with?

It comes with 2.4.18, but I compiled it because I wanted APM support since it's a laptop. I'll try to reinstall the kernel from the CD. Do you think if I gave you my kernel .config file, you could tell what I needed to add/change?

Sorry, that's unlikely, there are way too many options and I don't have the exact machine you're using (mine is a 600 not a 600x) so there would be a lot of hit or miss.

I'm really not going to be much help to you in a custom kernel environment, too unpredictable. Your best bet IMO when compiling a new kernel is to modify a copy of your existing .config, eg: the one from the currently running kernel. It's been my experience that keeping the original kernel/modules on the machine (if you have the disk space) in addition to the new kernel and it's modules is always a good idea, at least until you've verified that the new kernel is correctly supporting all your hardware.

I must say, I'm rather surprised that the "stock" slackware 8.1 kernel did not have any apm support compiled in, since the stock slackware 8.0 kernel (2.2.19) had it.

For what it's worth, my final recommendation in this matter would be to return your system to it's original post-installation state, and look at all the many kernels provided in the slackware distribution for one that supports apm, pcmcia, and anything else you're doing, odds are there's already a kernel compiled by Patrick & Co. that'll suit you.