I just bought a PNY USB Card Reader for my laptop that is pre-flash card. I don't have any media cards yet, but am going to buy a digital camera and SD card along with a used Zaurus SL-5500 and CF card in a couple days. I am running Slack 10.2 with kernel 2.4.31. I now have a new kernel module loading (USB-storage). Does this mean that the card reader has been recognized? Is there any way to test this reader without media cards?

I have a card reader in a desktop machine running slackware 10.1. It is probably necessary to modify your /etc/udev.d/rules.d/udev.rules file. Your card should have some info output under /sys/bus/usb. I don't think I have it right with mine, but you could look at the Flash Memory HOWTO. There is also a "usbinfo" type program floating around. Post your results, since I'm sure others are interested.

ok, I now have a CF card that WinXP picks up on this reader (though the card has to be plugged into the USB reader during boot). This card also works on my built in card reader on my AMD Athlon 64 Tower with Fedora Core 4 Linux. I am running Slack 10.2 with the ide kernel for 2.4.31. fdisk -l in Slack shows only hda. Could I do a modprobe to get this card reader recognized? Also, I'm able to mount my USB flash drives.

Udev is not used by the 2.4.31 kernel.

These devices mount as scsi drives (sda) and are usually formated
with the vfat (Windows 32 bit) file system. You will need to make a mount point in the /mnt directory and have permissions to access the content of the drive (rwx=Read, Write, eXecute).

Quick n' dirty directions:

As su or root
"mkdir /mnt/flash" (you can call it whatever you want)
"mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/flash"
"cd /mnt/flash"
"ls" to see the content of the flash drive.
When done cd out of the drive so you can unmount with
"umount /mnt/flash"

To learn more
"man mount"
Google about how to change fstab so you do not have to type out the whole command every time you mount a drive and how to assign permissions in the fstab.

Tried mounting sda1, sdb1, sdc1..../dev isn't found for the block device. It is vfat (that's how I mount it in Fedora Core under sdb1). Maybe it needs a modprobe to make that block device in the filesystem?

Try to see if the device is recognized. Remove the device and plug it back in and then run "dmesg | less" as root. As you page through the output you should see at the end of the output that the device is recognized. If it is post the output if you cannot determine the device.

If it is not recognized then you are likely missing a needed kernel module. The stock bare.i and acpibare.i kernel are configured for the necessary modules to mount flash drives.

wouldn't the device show up with fdisk -l if it was recognized?

I think that the device has to be mounted in order to use fdisk as I have a usbdrive that I mount easily. I plugged it in without mounting and ran fdisk sda (and sda1) and got the message "unable to open device sda" From "man fdisk"

The output of my dmesg after plugging in the device:
I added the blue color high light but this is what my system
assigns to the usb drive when I plug it in. My device works fine when I mount it as described in the previous post.