As I look through posts related to pcmcia and pci card problems on laptops I keep seeing references to cardctl and cardmgr, as if these were programs that give configuration info or are management utilities like lsmod. Yet I can't find them- there is no man pages for them, and they don't seem to be executable. I see that cardctl is in the /etc/bash_completion.d directory, but I don't know how to use the files in that directory. Even "locate" doesn't find them. Can someone tell me exactly how to use these and the syntax? I am using Debian with a 2.6 kernel. Examples would really help.

Thanks, Keith.

This is a shoot in the dark,but if I can remember right support for PCMCIA cards went away because of laptops have RJ-45 ports and wireless connections....

The last info I could find on it dates back to 2009....

the say to run command lspci -v | grep subordinate should help you find the card ,but there are no updates beyond kernel 2.6 for PCMCIA cards I've seen...


I may be wrong so keep looking

Good Luck

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Hi culaterout -

Thanks for responding.

I know about lspci, though I have never known of the "subordinate" qualifier.

I am working, at the moment, with an old Dell laptop, whose wireless card seems to be integrated into a pci/pcmcia card along with the ethernet function, very strange.

Yea, your are correct that many of the posts I see are dated. However, the cardctl is still part of the current kernels, and is part of a large number of files in the /etc/bash_completion.d subdirectory. I'd like to know how to use those files.

Almost all laptops do weird stuff. They tend to use pci to pci bridges a lot too. That is usually how the pc card attaches.

Not sure that the pc card or pcmcia would show up under lspci but I think it is now supported under hotplug.

You can still try cardctl after you plug in a pcmcia card.

http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/ke...ia/pcmcia.html

Yep, it is either hotplug or udev.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks jefro. That last link explains what culaterout was telling me. And it lead me to using pccardctl, which tells me that their is no available IRQ for the slot my wireless is connected to! Now I have to research that... any clues for that?

Thanks,
Keith

If you want to see the full article here is the link...





I installed the new kernel on my laptop from DELL. I did have some problems. It seems like my stupid laptop doesn't have enough irqs to handle using the USB port. Thus, I now have to buy a USB mouse (and maybe keyboard) to free up some irqs. I also had this problem when I tried to use my pcmcia modem and pcmcia ethernet card at the same time. I haven't been able to solve this problem. Now when I use the USB port, I can't use either pcmcia card. It is extremely annoying that I can't get anything to use irq 10, and that I can't disable the parallel port, serial port, and internal ps/2 mouse. The DELL computer was by far the best Linux laptop I had seen, but now it will become outdated soon. I imagine with kernel 2.4, there will be a lot more commercial support for Linux. Why on earth the software evil empire and the hardware evil empire came together to create the user-friendly plug-and-pray nonsense is beyond me. I know my laptop has free resources but I cannot force it to use those resources. Very annoying. I am extremely unimpressed with the BIOS of the particular DELL laptop I got.

I bought another laptop for one of my employees at GNUJobs.com from Emperor Linux, and it was properly configured, and I grilled the salesperson to make sure I got everything working without any problems. I am much happier with the laptop I got from Emperor Linux.

Another goofy thing I did was I forgot to install the iso9660 format into the kernel (or as a module). Now I can't read cdroms. I will have to compile the kernel one more time and specify to include the iso9660 filesystem format as a module.





Best I could say to try is update BIOS, maybe they had an update to resolve this conflicting issue????

This is a puzzling problem that either Dell fixed or Dell swept under the carpet....

Good Luck.....