Hi all -
I've not done a lot of investigation on this, but here's what I
found to be true with regard to my past trouble with PCMCIA working "out of
the box" on 6.1
Issue:
When booting the Mandrake 6.1 PCMCIA kernel the system has a major meltdown
when it goes to start the pcmcia service. I cannot detail what happens
because data just flies by on the screen and then the system is hung. No
logs are generated.
Resolution:
At first I thought it was merely the release of the PCMCIA code (3.1.1?) so
I downloaded the latest (3.1.4) and built working driver. However, now
that I've had a bit of time on my hands I've played with it a bit more and
have found the cause of the crash, or at least how to duplicate it and how
to avoid it.
Below are 3 lines from my config.out. The thing causing the crash
on my system was enabling the PnP BIOS capability.
UNSAFE_TOOLS=y
CONFIG_CARDBUS=y
# CONFIG_PNP_BIOS is not defined
If I say yes to the last - the system barfs, if I say no, the system boots
just fine. This leads me to assume that the Mandrake 6.1 PCMCIA kernel and
related modules are set for this PnP BIOS capability. I've read the
PCMCIA-HOWTO for a description of the PnP stuff, and it's basically a way
for the PCMCIA controller to look at the BIOS to avoid resource conflicts.
It also states that you can then use the cardbus utilities to tweak
resources for COM ports and other embedded things in the BIOS. My system
(Compaq Armada 1750) has a basic TI cardbus controller.
One would assume that when my system boots this PnP capability
allows the PCMCIA module to start fingering around in my system for
port/IRQ/DMA/whatever and it touches something the system does not like and
it freaks.
Regards -
Don
