Re: PCMCIA problems with TOshiba T1900 Satelite
> # 2. Maybe the Toshiba can't handle a 10/100 NIC/Modem card since it's
> # old and a 486sx after all.
>
> Don't know
If this were the problem, it would get configured (high beeps) but actually
misbehave (poor connectivity, flaky connections) but probably actually work
if in 10 mode.
Note that a cracked cord can also cause said flaky connections - ethernet is
kinda senstive to having a chair rolled over it too many times.
> # 3. Maybe I need to reinstall Debian with the NIC/Modem in the slot
> # rather than the 10Mbps NIC so the installation will detect it and
> # install around it.
>
> No, when pcmcia works fine, you can put in and take out cards
> whenever you like. If a card is recognized, it says high-beep,
> high-beep. If not, it say high-beep, low-beep (or just low-beep,
> apparently, sometimes).
The first high beep is the recognition that a card has been entered. The
second beep (high or low) is that it was able to be configured.
If you somehow managed to get a card recognized incorrectly, you would get
high beep, high beep, nasty behavior.
> I haven't had pcmcia problems recently, so I more or less forgot what
> the possible problems can be.
Example problems include:
(for IDE/SCSI) device wedging plus permanent "loss" of the assigned dev node.
(for any) recognition as the wrong device usually gets weird interrupts spoo -
which might even clear up when ejected.
Except if it gets recognized as "memory card" - which appears to be a
fallback for the earliest cards, which don't have much signal to
recognize. It doesn't seem to harm (but of course the card does not
work) and a re-insert usually corrects the recognition, if that's
possible. Happens to my IDE card when it gets hot.
(for netcards) might be slow or flaky - or only work with features ifconfig'd
out of use (eg, forcing to 10 Mbps)
(for modems) I dunno, I haven't used a cardmodem in a while, and haven't used
one that failed.
> Is the other laptop a linux machine too? Does the card work with a
> linux machine? One possibility is that the card is unsupported : there
> should be a list of supported cards amongst the files provided by the
> pcmcia package. Check in (somewhere like) /var/lib/dpkg/info/-
> pcmciaXYZ.list for a file named /ABC/DEF/supported.cards, and in that
> last file, for the name of your card.
If you've decided to get really experimental and solve the problem of
an unsupported card, the freeBSD "PAO" stuff when I last used it (almost
a year ago, and many versions, so your mileage may vary) during connection
states the identifier spouted by the card. They use this in theirs to
determine the support to use. (Why do I know this? because I have a SCSI
pcmcia that is unsupportable - it spouts no identifier at all - its MSwin
driver probes something unknown, and I'm not an assembler language type.)
You could of course turn off cardmgr and attempt loading the modules in
yourself. Take lotsa notes. And see if David Hinds' site shows that
somebody knows about that one and is working on it, maybe you can combine
efforts.
If someone knows a real procedure for growing support for an unsupported
card, lemme know. My hubby is getting more into programming lately, and
I might give him my Imation LS-120 card to attempt fixing. Last time I
asked at David Hinds' site noone had heard of it, nor seemed interested
since parallel versions work. Hmmph.
> Other possibility you don't have the kernel module needed for that
> card : if I get it correctly, when you put in a card, the card manager
> (cardmgr?) loads the kernel modules that are needed to drive that
> card.
According to its instructions, which in theory can be wrong.
> You probably have the pcmcia-cs and pcmcia-modules debian
> packages installed. Does the later's version match the linux kernel's
> version?
If it doesn't, no pcmcia should work because none of the modules will load;
probably you will see mismatch complaints in /var/log/messages about it.
> My source of information : the pcmcia-howto, which you can probably
> find at http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/PCMCIA-HOWTO.html.
>
> Good luck
> Etienne
I hope this is enough info to get going :)
-* Heather * star@starshine.org *-
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