Laptops :: pcmcia detection and wireless



Quote (tortoise @ Jan. 19 2005,15:43)
Thanks for the input.

I tried a friend's Orinoco non-cardbus card, and it didn't work either. DSL didn't even see that the card was plugged in. So, I am guessing that there is something more that needs doing. The old windows 95 that came with the comp was pretty heel-and-toe hooked in with the hardware, lots of proprietary stuff.

I'll have to check out the hp help you mention.

check the output of:

cat /proc/pci | more

and go through and look for entries for a "Cardbus" bridge or "PCI <-> PCMCIA Bridge" or something to that effect.   That should give you an idea of whether you are dealing with a Cardbus compatible PCMCIA controller chip on the motherboard.   The old compaqs "used" to all use a Cirrus cardbus compatible pcmcia controller, but it has been quite a while since I have serviced those older compaq laptops.

Once you figure out which type of PCMCIA controller chipset you have, you will want to do a bit of research to make sure the kernel module for your chipset is provided with the DSL installation.    

I believe you can also run:

pcic_probe

from a console window and it will attempt to identify your PCMCIA controller chipset.
Thanks, that's exactly the info I needed.

The bridge, according to pcic_probe is a Cirrus Logic CL 6729.
And according to pcic_probe -m it takes the i82365 kernel module.

However, the bridge is not detected by that module because it is in a unique situation according to this mailing-list archive. A "historical accident"  :;):

In order to get the bridge to work I need the old pcmcia-cs module, and with only a 1Gig hard-drive and 133MHz cpu, doing a kernel make would max out system resources :(   pitty.   ... unless a new version of dsl comes out that uses a 2.6x kernel (which has the needed driver).
Quote (tortoise @ Feb. 01 2005,13:11)
Thanks, that's exactly the info I needed.

The bridge, according to pcic_probe is a Cirrus Logic CL 6729.
And according to pcic_probe -m it takes the i82365 kernel module.

However, the bridge is not detected by that module because it is in a unique situation according to this mailing-list archive. A "historical accident"  :;):

In order to get the bridge to work I need the old pcmcia-cs module, and with only a 1Gig hard-drive and 133MHz cpu, doing a kernel make would max out system resources :(   pitty.   ... unless a new version of dsl comes out that uses a 2.6x kernel (which has the needed driver).

Time to find you a compatible b true pcmcia card

Brian
AwPhuch
Ooh. I just had a thought.
The pcmcia-cs readme indicates that it doesn't require a full kernel install, but it does require the full kernel source. I might be able to swing that.

Does dsl use the debian kernel sources, or does it have it's own?
Also, I noticed that the myDSL has a gcc for dsl 0.8. Would that work for dsl 0.92 or would I need to get gcc from somewhere else?
Install the "apt-pkg" tools from the mydsl server.   Then you should be able to use apt-get to install the binaries for pcmcia-cs from the debian packages servers.

That should get you the binary module you need to support your PCMCIA bridge in your laptop.    I don't remember if you are running a HDD install or a CD install, if you are running a HDD then the above procedure might cause you some problems.   With overwriting something you didn't want.  

Tonight when I get home will see if I can extract out the needed file from one of the debian binary packages for you, and stick it up online somewhere where you can download it.  That way you can just copy it over without having to worry about blowing something up.
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