PCMCIA help on a toshiba laptop

Forum: Laptops
Topic: PCMCIA help on a toshiba laptop
started by: tp671

Posted by tp671 on May 09 2005,13:41

I have a toshiba satellite 1555 CDS laptop pc I want to run Damn Small Linux on. The pc specs are:

- AMD 380mhz k6
- 32mb Ram
- 4 gig hard drive

I can get dsl to run fine on the machine, but when it boots I have to run dsl nopcmcia Any other way I try to boot, dsl will hang after detecting the cpu (failsafe also works)

I have a pcmcia ethernet card I need to use to get on the net. The laptop doesnt have a built in ethernet adapter. The card is a Etherlink 3 LAN pc card #3C589D

Is there anyway to configue this card after I skip the detection on boot. I was reading this link:

< http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Howto/PCMCIA-HOWTO-6.html#new-card >

and when I run cardmgr I get cardmgr[472] no pcmcia driver in proc/devices

I am completely lost on this one. Can anyone help me get on the web?

Posted by cbagger01 on May 09 2005,23:26

Try DSL version 0.5.3.1

This version is based on KNOPPIX 3.2 which supposedly runs on your laptop.

Supposedly, this laptop has a nonstandard pcmcia socket (whatever that means) so it has problems with the default pcmcia services.

Posted by tp671 on May 10 2005,01:35

I tried ver 0.5.3.1, and it detected it, but locked on line cardmgr[55]: executing: 'modprobe 3c589_cs'

I put in a knoppix 3.8 cd and it detected it fine, but knoppix is to slow on this machine, even with ice or fluxbox. Can I copy the config file for the card in knoppix and paste it in my damn small config?

Posted by cbagger01 on May 10 2005,23:04

I doubt it.

Knoppix 3.8 kernel is 2.6.x series, while DSL kernel is 2.4.x series.

Posted by tempestuous on May 15 2005,04:57

tp671,
It might be a simple problem of pcmcia services allocating an irq for your network card which conflicts with something else - most likely a serial port.
See my post "Avoiding PCMCIA device conflicts with serial" - < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....nflicts >
The icewalkers.com link you mentioned explained this issue, too.
When you run "cat /proc/interrupts" you should see a list of all irq's in use, but often the serial ports and serial devices are missing from the list. From your bios or laptop documentation try to find out what these irq's are (or should be) - probably irq 3 & 4. Then exclude these irq's from being used by pcmcia services by modifying /etc/pcmcia/config.opts.

If you're running a hard drive install, this fix should work fine.
But if you're running the liveCD it will be difficult to change the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file before pcmcia services load.

Posted by tp671 on May 17 2005,14:15

Hey, thanks for the advice. I will look at it tonight. Im am still running the live cd, I didnt want to install it till I got the bugs worked out.

I tried a knoppix 3.8 live cd, and it detected the pcmcia card fine, but it was slooooowwwwww! I even booted it using fluxbox, which was better, but still, the apps were just to heavy for this machine.
I think if I pick up a 128mb upgrade, I may be able to run the knoppix on it.

I'm going to try to get this fixed is dsl first though, Ill post here if it works or not. Thanks again!!

Posted by tempestuous on May 18 2005,00:31

The contents of the main startup script in Knoppix and DSL (/etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig) are different. In my case, Knoppix fails to set up my CompactFlash card in its PCMCIA adaptor, where DSL succeeds.

LiveCD and HDinstall both have their benefits. In your case, it sounds like you intend to run DSL/Knoppix/whatever on a single specific computer - this is clearly a case for HDinstall.
I suggest you go right ahead and install both Knoppix plus DSL, as long as you have a minimum 4G hard drive. You can multiboot them.
Once installed to hard drive (and DMA enabled) DSL will load and run fast. And as long as you configure a swap partition, you won't even need a RAM upgrade.
Then you can try the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts tweak ... and if it doesn't work, no harm done. At this point, you could consider deleting the existing PCMCIA section in the startup script - it's around line 400, and paste the Knoppix variation to replace it.