Re: IRQ Conflicts ?
Not wishing to start a debate, but just setting some facts straight here
:-
On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Erik Mouw wrote:
> Hmm, that's probably not good, I think your laptop has a CardBus
> bridge, not the old 82365 PCMCIA bridge. The 2.4 kernels have the
> yenta_socket module for CardBus bridges, my experience is that
> linux-2.4 has much better support for the exotic hardware found in
> laptops.
Erik, would you perhaps explain therefore to me why almost 60% of the
hardware in my laptop ceases to function if I run a 2.4 kernel, but work
flawlessly with a 2.2 kernel (2.2.20 basline debian is my currently
version).
The biggest problems I had with 2.4 was :-
PCMCIA - No functionality at all. No matter what pcmcia device I used it
failed miserably, and yes, I did try running the yenta socket driver,
which is the correct one for this laptop.
DOCK - Pretty much all the dock devices ceased to function with the 2.4
kernel.
Now, I mainly run my laptop docked, and I use a wireless PCMCIA network
card, therefore in regards to the "much better support" that 2.4
supposedly has - not in my case. Oh, and I have a fully updated Toshiba
Tecra 8000.
And one more thing - until the 2.4 kernel is truly stable as far as the
Debian testing process is concerned (in other words until it becomes the
default kernel), you won't ever find me running it in a production system
that is more important than my laptop. I wanted to use it on that, but it
failed miserably, I therefore refuse to trust it on a production server.
However, I do know a few people who happen to be running the 2.4 kernel in
a sufficiently useful (to them) level... most of them are being very
careful about what hardware they use - namely they are keeping clear of
SMP in the 2.4 kernel revs (apparently some code in the 2.4 SMP listing
can break things like RAID), and various old hardware support (like well,
the Toshiba laptop's PCMCIA controller).
In final note - the 2.2.20 kernel has a Cardbus driver for the PCMCIA
controllers, this works quite well, and if you don't need to upgrade the
kernel for some other reason (for instance, you install RH7.1/7.2 *duck*),
then you should not do so... unless of course you have spare time to
devote to kernel testing... in which case you already know of the
potential risks... I hope :-)
Unfortunately, I seem to have missed the whole 2.3 kernel in this
whirlwind rush to upgrade kernels.... I know it exists... but people seem
to think that a bleeding edge kernel is more important than a working
kernel...
Regards,
Cassandra
PS - The other PCMCIA driver is tcic. My laptop has a multi-mode PCMCIA
controller, which will work with either device, depending upon the setting
I have the controller in.
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