PCMCIA Cards missing... Stupidity or driver issies?
 

Hey

I'm trying to get a really old laptop working with linux, and seeming to get PCMCIA troubles...

This laptop's generally a muck around project I did to learn a little more about an operating system I know little about. It is a Digital HiNote VP, 100mhz, 20mb ram (16mb SO-DIMM, 4mb onboard I think)

So basically I've got linux running on this laptop, finally after much playing around, it is running Slackware, with only A packages installed, everything seems to be working fine except the PCMCIA slots... It is also running the bare.i kernel on 2.4

Basically I have a WG511 v2 card (which I know reqiures ndis wrappers to get working, so I doubt the CPU could handle it) and a Xircom 10mbit ethernet/dialup card, however lspci doesnt show anything other than the PCMCIA bus...

Although for my own sanity I wont copy paste the text from lspci exactly (and it has no usb, network or floppy) but this is what it dumps in short

Host bridge: Intel Corporation 430MX
Bridge: Intel Corporation 430MX
VGA compatable controller: Chips and technologies
PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev e2)

Is there something that isnt getting added correctly, or something I must recompile into the kernel or just a stupid mistake? I'd really love to get this working, and sorry if the answer is as simple as 'lspcmcia' as I have never used linux on a laptop before this beastie (and yes, I have tried lspcmcia : /)

Cheers
-Fragged

In the old 2.4 kernel days on my notebook I would have to install pcmcia-cs after a kernel upgrade to get the pcmcia slots working. One thing to make sure is the pcmcia is 32bit pccard slots versuses 16bit creditcard slots. The WG511 is pccard type. Know depending on which one the WG511 card is it may be able to use the prism54 modules if made in taiwan. The China release of that version can only use the ndiswrapper package beacuse it uses a soft firmware versus hard encoded firmware that the Taiwan version used. Here is a link on that. Also not sure if prism54 is in the 2.4 kernel releases. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=295200

Brian

Thanks, I checked and it seems that the laptop only has 16 bit PCMCIA, the card I was using was only 16 bit as well, however I resolved the issue... To help others that know how to search, I did this

cardctl reset
cardctl info
dhcpcd eth0
ifconfig <--should now give you an IP address

:D hope this helps anyone else

Glad to see you have it resolved.

Brian

Interesting.

Im struggling to make my PCMCIA work (i mean, TURN ON the damn card).

I have an old Toshiba 335CDS with 64MB and 4GB HD.

Installed VectorLinux but cant manage my PCMCIA NIC. Guess ill try this when i get home.

Will post results here. Also, full hardware spec (to make this post a really useful reference)