Laptops :: No signs of life through the PCMCIA ports



apart from trying out all the possible cardctl options, i can't really think of anything that would help. i trust you've tried this.

howie
Yup. I have to admit, though, that most of it was way over my head.

I did find a thread that talked about success modifying the GRUB loader to include acpi=off, and when I tried it I could access the CF card reader. The wireless cards still refuse.

It's promising, though. If I can figure out what file format to use to mount the CF card reader, I can at least move stuff back and forth from laptop to laptop without too much stress. It would be a step in the right direction. I would prefer they were directly accessing the network.

Cheers. Thanks for the help.
Well, it is time for me to admit defeat. I played my last card today, and came up with nothing to show for it.

I recompiled the kernel for the EzBook 700e, this time leaving out the PCMCIA structure that was built in by default. Hours later, I installed it, ran it and tried to build in the PCMCIA services for Linux package.

Unfortunately, that turned into an entirely new can of worms -- and one I decided I didn't want to open. I couldn't be sure it would be of any real use, and in addition, most of the resources I needed were online ... and without my PCMCIA wireless, I can't get online with that machine.

So I was caught in a bit of a Catch-22. That's quite a catch, that Catch-22. Best there is.

Perhaps one day when I have more than just a month's experience with Linux and a better grasp of hardware quirks, I'll tackle the problem again. I don't know how Windows is able to activate those cards on these machines, but the solution is beyond my grasp.

Either way, my efforts are posted here for the benefit of the next person who stumbles onto this problem. I wish them better luck. I appreciate the help I found in this forum and the suggestions everyone made, even if it was just "install ndiswrapper, dude."

The real tragedy is this: The function for either of these laptops is as a passive network monitor (not even an Internet gateway, just a monitor), so without Internet access, they are of little use to me. I think they shall pass into the great afterworld of technology, the digital heaven, the place where all good computers go when they die ...

eBay. :p

Cheers and good luck. See you all around the boards.  :D
Hi. Just thought I'd update this thread for the benefit of anyone else who happens to have this problem.

In short, there were two or three different things going on here, and while the problems looked the same, they weren't.

First of all, the Linksys WPC54G ver. 2 is a terribly finicky card. I won't talk down about it too much out of deference to the folks that have one, but it's quite tricky to work with. If you've gotten it to work, consider yourself lucky. If it's not working for you and you're banging your head against a wall ... stop. Take it back to Wal-Mart or sell it on eBay. There are cards out there that are much easier to work with, and they're not nearly as expensive.

Second, the Presario 1020 that I mentioned in earlier posts has a peculiar hardware structure for the PCMCIA bays. It's a Cirrus Logic setup (I forget the specific number), but as I understand it, it will require a special kernel compiled with that structure to make it work. That's why nothing was working on that machine save the CF reader, which did not require special attention like a powered PCMCIA wireless card would.

And since we're on the subject ... there are quite a few differences between newer kernels (such as the 2.6.9+ that is installed with Ubuntu 5.10 by default) and earlier versions (such as the 2.4.31 built into Slackware 10.2, for example). If your PCMCIA ports seem dead under newer kernels, you might benefit from dropping back to the 2.4 series, or recompiling with the pure pcmcia-cs source.

Finally, older wireless cards (802.11b-only cards, for example) are a bit more forgiving with older equipment -- as you might imagine. That doesn't mean they're perfect, but it does mean that with enough poking and prodding, I had much more success with a b card than a g card.

Which is ironic in another sense, because I spent the afternoon installing WindowsMe (I know, I know) on my father's computer, and after it was all said and done, we tried to change out his old b card for a new g card, and it flat out refused to work. The b card was quite eager and worked without a hitch. But the fancy g card wanted nothing to do with WinMe. Can you blame it?

In the end, the working setup was the CTX EzBook 700e running Slackware 10.2 (2.4.31 kernel) and a Microsoft MN-520 wireless b card. It took a lot of .conf editing to get Slack to run, but it worked after an hour's tweaking or so. My heart leapt skyward when Slack rebooted and two little lights came to life on the wireless. It was a joy to behold. And when I tried it under DSL 2.2b, it was equally successful.

An additional note: Personally, I found Slack to be cumbersome. The setup is a little confusing for the newb and quasi-newb, although it's still a far cry from Gentoo. If you're having the same problem I was, and you want something fleshier than DSL but not as clunky as Slack, download the Ubuntu Hoary install. As I understand it, Hoary never got past kernel 2.4.27, which means you might have better luck getting that old P-II with the wireless b card to surf the net than you would with Breezy. Of course, you'll have to use a different desktop environment than Gnome or KDE, since your machine probably won't be able to keep up with either of those! :D

Cheers and thanks!

Disclaimer: I have all of a month and a half's experience with Linux, and while I've learned a LOT in that time about hardware and software, I am definitely not a guru. If I've suggested or said something that's just plain wrong, please forgive me ... or better yet, correct me, so I can learn where my error lies. Cheers! -- K.Mandla

original here.