PCMCIA Xircom Realport Cardbus 10/100+Modem56

Forum: Networking
Topic: PCMCIA Xircom Realport Cardbus 10/100+Modem56
started by: aveline

Posted by aveline on Feb. 04 2005,10:28

The card I am using on an older panasonic toughbook laptop is a "Xircom Realport Cardbus 10/100+Modem56 " which works just dandy for all of um 5 minutes? The number on the card is RBEM56G-100. I've used this lil card w/Mepis just fine & XP is OK w/it too. But for some reason DSL 9.2 detects it & loads it fine on boot yet after say opening firefox & going to google, it just will not work. If I become root & try to use ping it fails; ditto doing an ifup/down it tells me the card isn't in existence. Netcardconfig fails too.

I go thru a linksys router which assigns IP's to my LAN thru DHCP &I'm fairly sure DHCP is enabled on DSL otherwise how would I get to google to begin with? Any ideas ??

Aveline

Posted by kaboom on Feb. 04 2005,14:14

I had an issue this week with a Xircom RBE-100, which is the same ethernet controller as yours, minus the modem (I have the exact same card as you, but I haven't tried it yet). I had to modprobe xircom_cb then run netcardconfig to get it to work.

I thought it strange. The Xircom cards are the only ones I've had to do this with. If I boot in the docking station for my laptop , using its built-in Intel ethernet card, it works right on boot-up.

Posted by aveline on Feb. 05 2005,08:04

Quote (Guest @ Feb. 04 2005,07:14)

As I said, on boot its detected & works fine if I go to google & type in a query. But as soon as I try to hit a link from google to go anywhere else or try to entere a new URL, it fails. Netcardconfig does too, the DHCP times out. I'm lost...

how do you do this modprobe thingy? And I'm running DSL off a cd atm, was planning to do a hdd install but if this issue cont's I'm pitching DSL away for the laptop.

aveline

Posted by Mata on Feb. 12 2005,14:35

hello

I have similar problem with my Xircom CE3B-100.
DSL detects it correctly but after network configuration,network doesn't work. I have no problem with network configuration,interface is UP but I have no connection. Most interested fact is this, that sometimes I have connection, it's strange, because I always do this same steps. I haven't DHCP.
Did you ever seen such problem?
Please,help mi.
Greetings
Mata

Posted by aveline on Feb. 23 2005,06:59

well I searched the Mepis forum & the only thing I found that some say works was this:

When I boot it tries to bring up eth0 (the d-link card) before loading PCMCIA services, so I think that causes a bit of a problem.
I put a shell script in the /etc/rc5.d directory which I called S98pumpx. This makes it run just before kde starts. The contents of the shell script is as follows:
#!/bin/sh
pump -i eth0
This redoes the initialization of the nic as by this time pcmcia services have been started somewhere earlier in the various rc scripts. Not fancy or a proper fix, but it does work!

I tried to make this script but I don't know how to get it to execute on boot or how to make it work with mepis...would it work on DSL?

ideas?

EDIT: I ran Hikarunix *a DSL based distro that is based off of 0.8.x I believe for DSL*... the pcmcia card was detected & ran just fine for all of 5 minutes...then mysteriously it dies. Even the network window that sits on that little window thing in the lower right corner was showing net activity then suddenly stopped ... why? I run ifconfig it tells me there is no eth0 yet 5 mins ago it showed an entry for eth0 & a dhcp supplied addy from the router just fine.

Running dmesg gave me that Hikarunix uses the xircom_tulip.cb driver/module. I modprobed for it after trying to make it go "down" thru a term window & no error or anything came up. SO I tried to make it go Up again w/out success. *starts to wonder if I should make a new thread or someone should move this to the laptops forum?*. One last thing, the DHCP Client button is *not* depressed when I open the DSL panel on either DSL 9.2 or Hikarunix...yet obviously it worked b/c that is how the router sends out IP addys. WTF? If I try to use Netcardconfig it fails too everytime.

*sigh* Ideas?
aveline

Posted by aveline on Feb. 24 2005,08:39

*Does a happy dance* Success!!!!!

someone should move this thread to laptops ? lol

A friend of mine gave me the final hint to get Hikarunix working with the net. I assume this will work for DSL too.

I ended up having to make links (soft links whatever that means exactly) like so:

(this is on the cmd line in EmelFM or an Xterm)

-> cd /etc/rc5.d
-> ln -s /etc/init.d/networking S50networking # see below*

-> ln -s /etc/init.d/pcmcia S49pcmcia #same applies here

-> reboot

When it reboots, the links you made *should* force DSL to look up the info on how to configure the card first *then* start up the network itself.

The fact this works on Hikarunix leads me to believe this will work for most distros that have trouble with putting up the network before configuring the net card. I hope this helps someone else cuz gods know this issues driven me batty on DSL & Mepis! Yet the workaround works perfectly on these 2 distros. Whee... I am the linux goddess

# * this makes a soft link to that file which is located in the directory rc5.d; the # has to be less than 98 and likely more than 20 if i remember correctly. Don't worry if theres already a link in the /init.d with the number S50, DSL should go alphabetically if 2 #s match up in its search for which link to hit next.

Posted by foxmaster on Feb. 27 2005,22:58

hello m8's
I got the same type of card and I cant get it to work...
Done and tested what I have found on this board but nothing.
The card works in other dist.. I have tryed to add the symlinks but no change the stange thing is the second symlink dont point to enything atleast I cant find any pcmcia in the dir it points to...
pls any help wulde be gr8.

Posted by aveline on Feb. 27 2005,23:17

Quote (foxmaster @ Feb. 27 2005,15:58)

OK what you want to check is:

-> go to the /etc/init.d directory on whatever partition your DSL is installed to (keep in mind I did a hard drive install as I found that a LiveCD boot or frugal did not make those directories on the hdd for some reason...maybe I did something wrong?) and see if there is a file in there called pcmcia

-> do the same for the file "networking" under the init.d directory again.

If these 2 files exist, you *should* as root or using sudo, be able to make the symlinks I made then you must reboot for these to take effect properly. If they still don't work try a hard drive install perhaps & the symlinks idea.

Are you using DHCP or a static ip? That will make a difference I think.

Aveline

Posted by foxmaster on Feb. 28 2005,08:56

thx for the fast reply.. I have a hd install and using static ip lan. I will try it useing dhcp. the pcmcia file in the init.d dir
cant do anything it's empty unlike...??

Foxmaster

Posted by foxmaster on Feb. 28 2005,14:43

cheked the bios and made some changes,,

And now it auto load the xircom moduel and I can set up the network adress but it wont start the card..???

I got this error on boot"/etc/modules.conf is more recent than /lib/modules/2.4.26/modules.dep"

can u m8's get somthing out of this

Foxmaster