PCI card --> PCMCIA adaptor --> cellular data service
 

I need to set up a GNU/Linux desktop box to connect to the net using a PCMCIA Cardbus "cell phone" card. For that to work, I need an adaptor to connect a PCMCIA card to my x86 box. The PCMCIA card is one of those Cingular wireless data service jobbies.

I'm guessing that the best way to go about this is to use a PCI card that accepts a PCMCIA card plugged into it.

The computer will be running Debian Sarge and function as an access point for a couple other computers to access the net. It'll probably function as a router doing NAT and have a couple of ethernet cards in it (alongside the PCMCIA adaptor card).

Can anyone recommend a PCI PCMCIA adaptor card that works with Linux? I checked out newegg, and they've got a few for around $25, but none mention Linux-compatibility (of course).

Where can I find out more about getting this sort of setup working? Has anyone here done it?

I'm guessing that there'll be two distinct drivers involved:

1. getting Linux to talk to the PCI card, and
2. getting Linux to talk to the PCMCIA cell phone card that I'm going to be plugging into it.

Any tips gratefully appreciated.

Looks like the card is supposed to be a Sony Ericsson GC83.

Of course, as usual, I'll put together a howto for this if I can get it going (unless there's already one, which in that case I'll try and contribute to).

Searched around here:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html
but didn't find anything with the word "cellular" or "mobile" in it that looked appropriate.

For a cardbus-pci adapter, look for one that is yenta-compatible. I got an Elan p111 for $12, but it appears the place I got it from doesn't sell it anymore.

Thanks for the reply aaa. What does "yenta-compatible" mean?

Digging around on the net, I've found comments like:

|
| make sure that PCIC="yenta_socket" is set in /etc/conf.d/pcmcia
|

and

|
| <*> PCMCIA/CardBus support
| [ ] Enable PCMCIA debugging
| <*> CardBus yenta-compatible bridge support
|

and some mention of the yenta stuff here: http://www.ngolde.de/laptop.html

Also:

|
| pcmcia
| The PCMCIA slot is a standard Ricoh yenta-compatible CardBus slot, which should work just fine with 16- and 32-bit cards.
|
from http://www.brodo.de/linux/computer/sternenlicht/

Any other tips anyone?

Ok, nevermind. I'm too busy with other projects to figure this out right now, so a co-worker is going to set it up, and I think he's going to use Windows 2k.