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Topic: Help needed with pcmcia 3CCFE575BT

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Terzino

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Posts: 21
Joined: July 2005

Posted: July 29 2005,06:42

I'm a newbie with an old Compaq notebook without cd-rom and 80 MB ram.
I'm running DSL from a floppy and and a compressed image of DSL on my HD.
It's seems all OK, but when I insert my network pcmcia card, 3Com Megahertz 3CCFE575BT Cardbus, I have the notebook frozen.
I red about pcmcia_cs, but I don't know how to use it.
Can anybody help me?
Thanks in advance

Terzino

Group: Members
Posts: 21
Joined: July 2005

Posted: Aug. 03 2005,06:32

I put DSL on the hd (with dsl-hdinstall), but I have the the problem again. I'm sure the nic is ok: I'm using it with Win2k with dual-boot, and I used it seveal weeks ago with Puppy Linux.
Please, help me.

tempestuous Offline

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Posts: 259
Joined: Aug. 2004

Posted: Aug. 03 2005,07:59

It sounds like pcmcia services is allocating an irq for your network card which conflicts with something else - probably a serial port or internal modem.
See my post "Avoiding PCMCIA device conflicts with serial" - http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=3211

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 is easy.
But if you're running the liveCD it will be difficult to change the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file before pcmcia services load.

Also, other people on the forum have reported problems with Compaq laptops with a Cirrus Logic PCI bridge.

rja

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Posts: 46
Joined: Jan. 2005

Posted: Aug. 03 2005,14:55

I'm typing this on a Compaq Armada SB with a 3CCFE575BT running DSL-1.3.1. The Armada is similar to a 1592x, 233Mhz Mobile Pentium MMX, 96MB memory, 800x600 lcd. It has a floppy, hd, and cd, but my ide is starting to fail with lost interrupts and timeouts, so I am using a pcmcia microdisk for swap and file space.

I always COLD boot with the pcmcia card(s) inserted and attached to the network. DSL has always come up cleanly using my dhcp server to get it's ip info.

I never try to unload or insert a pcmcia card while it is running. Also, don't try to reboot, always shutdown and cycle the power.

I did have a problem with Fedora Core 4 not recognizing the network card if it was in the top pcmcia slot, even though it had worked in that slot with many different versions of redhat/fedora/dsl/kinoppix/etc. Now, I just leave it in the bottom slot, even though DSL doesn't care which slot is used.

If you haven't tried yet, cold boot with the card inserted. Then, if that doesn't work, try a different pcmcia slot if you have more than one.

Also, I use/need these options at boot time:

dsl vga=789 nodma noagp noapic acpi=off noicons screen=800x600

When I try dsl-1.4, I'll look into the minimal and lowram settings.

Terzino

Group: Members
Posts: 21
Joined: July 2005

Posted: Aug. 05 2005,07:35

Thank you, rja
I used my Compaq Armada 1572 (Pentium I 233 with 80 Mb ram and a 3CCFE575BT pcmcia network card) for a long time and with dozens of OS (Win and Linux), but it's the first time I have trouble with pcmcia.
I had the nic inserted in the socket 1, with the notebook frozen.
Now I have the nic in the socket 0, and I use your suggested boot options, and all is OK.
If you run near my town, you will have a pizza payed from me!! :;):

Thanks again

5 replies since July 29 2005,06:42

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