>On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Richard A. Smith wrote:
>
>> I have no idea if this exists anywhere since I never found anything.
>> But something that would have been an godsend for me would have been
>> some lowlevel code that initializes the PCMCIA sub-subsystem. 90% of
>> my PIA over the last several months have been reworking the pcmcia
>> sub-system so that I can use my wireless network card as a netboot
>> device.
>
>can you tell us what we should do?
I'd love to but I don't know.. *grin* Currently I have a linux
kernel boot using a hacked up version of the init scripts and a
subset of the PCMCIA, iwconfig, and busybox that is compiled with
uClibc. That gets the size down to levels that fit in my flash.
I guess what really needs to happen is someone needs to write low
level init routines for pcmcia. Most of the pcmcia complexity is all
the hot plug detection, finding the corresponding drivers, allocating
resources and then loading them. All without gacking the system.
But from an embedded system standpoint I don't need most of that. I
am fine to hard code most of the settings.
Currently what I have probally isn't much use to most people since I
guess I'm one of the few people crazy enough to attempt wireless
netboot. I searched all I could find of netboot projects and didn't
find any reference to PCMCIA except in etherboot where they say it's
not supported due to lack of lowlevel drivers.
Perhaps someone else knows of a project I missed... That's partially
why I mention it now.
I can see in the future that linuxBIOS level PCMCIA init might be
really useful for laptops. Still its a ways off.
I would write the drivers my self but currently I don't have the
spare cycles. As Eric says damn priorities always get in the way.
Probally
I really just wanted to get my say in so that perhaps some eager
beaver laptop user/coder might take it up as a project.
--
Richard A. Smith Bitworks, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 501.846.5777
Sr. Design Engineer http://www.bitworks.com
