Kernel 2.6.8 won't talk to Cirrus PD6729 PCI to PCMCIA Bridge

[Clayton <lists@ckintl.biz>]

Hi,

I am dipping my toe into the 2.6 Kernel world on my play machine/test bed, an old Thinkpad 560E with the Cirrus PD6729 PCI to PCMCIA Bridge. The PCMCIA subsystem was working before with the Knoppix 2.4.22-xfs kernel, which I have since broken in the process of de-Knoppix'ing my install, thinking that the Knoppix stuff was interfering with the 2.6 Kernel hardware detection of my PCMCIA. Apparently not.... and now I have no PCMCIA/network whatsoever, in either kernel.

This particular machine also has no floppy, no CD, no USB, so I would really like to get PCMCIA networking going with my currently installed 2.6.8 kernel, and avoid taking the machine apart again and using a hard-drive enclosure to get stuff on the hard-drive. (Note that I have no source on this machine as yet, so patching also is not an easy option.....)

It seems quite suspicious that both my VGA controller and PCMCIA bridge are using IRQ 0, so I am thinking the PCMCIA bridge needs to go to a different interrupt, but haven't a clue where to begin with 2.6. Also, BIOS on this machine doesn't seem to offer any method of changing interrupts. (Note that after some googling I have already tried the boot parameters "pci=biosirq noapic acpi=off" without apparent success.)

So here is what happens when I boot the 2.6.8-1-386 stock Debian kernel (bear with the scanty details as I have to type everything, and try to choose the relevant bits):

lspci -vv:

0000:00:03.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 0

0000:00:13.0 PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev e2)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 0

syslog:
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Error 81 when fetching IRQ routing table.
MPIIX: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:01.0
MPIIX: chipset revision 3
MPIIX: bad irq (0): will probe later
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 0000:00:13.0
pd6729: Cirrus PD6729 PCI to PCMCIA Bridge at 0x3e0 on irq 0
pd6729: configured as a 2 socket device
pd6729: Failed to register irq 0, aborting
pd6729: probe of 0000:00:13.0 failed with error -16

lsmod:
3c589_cs        0                                (modprobed manually)
ds                     1   3c589_cs
yenta_socket  0                                (modprobed manually)
pd6729            0
pcmcia_core   4   3c589_cs,ds,yenta_socket,pd6729

Thanks in advance for any suggestions on how to get this thing working, and of course let me know if any more information is needed.
Clayton