I am running SuSE 8.0 Professional on my Sony Vaio PCG-FX140 and also on my aging desktop (200 MHz MMX). I updated from SuSE 7.3 Professional, but because of inexperience and sloppiness, I had to do a clean install of 8.0 on my laptop... Although I do not consider myself a *x guru, I will describe my experiences pertinent to the PCMCIA topic.
Under SuSE 7.3 Professional I got PCMCIA to work. I am not quite sure how, though; it was by chance (given my non-guru status). What I remember doing was NOT compliling PCMCIA into the kernel (because of unknown idioncyncracies of my Vaio, I had to use "nopcmcia=yes", otherwise is would hang during boot right after loading the USB drivers). After the system booted, I would become root and install pcamcia_core, yenta_socket, and --I think-- another module (all modules installed with modprobe). After that I would issue rpcmcia reload and PCMCIA ran fine. Why that worked I am not sure. But it did. And I tried it with Rob Anderson's (of SLUG fame) 10 Base T card and with a IDE drive connected to a card slot via a (notebook) IDE-to-PCMCIA adaptor. Both worked fine. Under SuSE 8.0 Professional, I did not have to do anything. My IDE drive (connected, as desribed above, via an IDE-to-PCMCIA adaptor) was INSTANTLY recognized. I did not have to monkey around with any modules; it worked right out of the box. SuSE 8.0 comes with the 2.4.18 kernel. I would be careful using any earlier 2.4 kernel. The SuSE support site claimed a few months ago (before 8.0 was out) that there were problems with the USB support of the earlier 2.4 kernels --which I found out the hard way because my USB modem did not work under 2.4.10 SuSE 7.3 originally came with-- and recommended upgrading to 2.4.16. However, I read somewhere on the web that somebody screwed up the source code of the 2.4.16 PCMCIA modules because he exchanged a hyphen with an underscore (or, maybe, vice versa) in many of them! So, my understanding is that the USB modules for the 2.4.16 kernel were finally right __BUT__ the PCMCIA modules were broken!!! Anyway, right now under the 2.4.18 kernel my USB modem works great (and also my USB flash card reader,which I have to use because the USB firmware of my Nikon Coolpix 990 camera seems to be really messed up, even under Windows) and my IDE notebook drive, connected via the PCMCIA adaptor, works fine, too. Therefore, I think that both PCMCIA and USB work fine in 2.4.18 but __NOT__ in 2.4.16 or earlier. SuSE 7.3 Professional had a graphical application, cardctl, to help diagnose and manage PCMCIA plugins. In SuSE 8.0 Professional it seems to me that the GUI for cardctl is gone and that it can be used only from the command line. I hope all this has helped. CF Ferenc Tamas Gyurcsan wrote: >>e) /etc/rc.config is supposed to have these (uncommented) entries: >>START_PCMCIA = yes (I found this one) and also PCMCIA = i82365 (I >>did not find this entry even after searching for those terms using >>the pico text editor. >> >First of all, good luck with pcmcia and suse 7.3. >I believe you'll need yenta_socket instead of i82365. ds, and pcmcia_core are >required too. I also recall that I may be using the kernel card manager, not >the external one, and you have to set this in one of the config files. So >modprobe pcmcia_core, yenta_socket(s?), ds. Then your card's module. The >error messages you get from module loading couldn't be less helpful, so >you'll also have to look at dmesg, in case that's more helpful. >If you can't get it to work with that, I'll check my laptop, but it's turned >off now. >One more thing: do not try cold-plug first (the card is plugged in when you >boot up). When you have hotplug working (boot up, and when everything is up, >plug the card in), then you can experiment with cold-plug. > >>Info from sourceforge seems to suggest that linux kernels 2.4.10 and >>later have built in support for my card, so maybe some of this is >>already built into the kernel? >> >I'm pretty sure it will be a module; the kernel isn't compiled with it. But >suse has a 2.4.16 kernel package somewhere; you might wanna download that too. > >>g) Separate issue: I noticed that some inetd services are turned on >>(time,telnet,login,talk,ntalk,finger). Should I turn these off? >> >Unless you get your network up, they don't cause too much harm:-) > >>i) I found the directory /lib/modules/2.4.12/pcmcia but it is >>empty. Would the actual driver be in here if it is set up as a >>loadable module? I think the actual driver is supposed to be named >>orinoco_cs.o but I cannot find this file or where I am supposed to >>put it. >> >Check your kernel source and see if you find the .c file there. If not, then >you'll need a kernel that has it (or build the module yourself, and move it >to the right location). > >I would be interested whether suse 8.0 has somewhat better pcmcia support. >Well, let me know how it goes. > >--Ferenc > >***************************************************************** >To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] >with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. >***************************************************************** > > ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
