PC-Card

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Wikipedia

This article describes the setup of PC-Card (also known as PCMCIA) controllers.

Installation

Kernel Configuration

The following kernel options must be activated for PCMCIA controllers:

KERNEL

Device drivers  --->
    PCCard (PCMCIA/CardBus) support  --->
        <*>   16-bit PCMCIA support
        [*]     Load CIS updates from userspace (EXPERIMENTAL)
        [*]   32-bit CardBus support

        Select a socket driver, e.g.:
        [*]   CardBus yenta-compatible bridge support (yenta-socket)

Portage Configuration

Portage knows the global USE flag pcmcia for enabling support for PC-Cards in other packages. Enabling this USE flag will pull in sys-apps/pcmciautils automatically:

FILE /etc/portage/make.conf

USE="... pcmcia ..."

After setting the USE flag in the step above be sure to update the system so the changes take effect:

root #emerge --ask --changed-use --deep @world

To install pcmciautils manually (if it is not already pulled in):

USE flags for sys-apps/pcmciautils PCMCIA userspace utilities for Linux

debug	Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces
staticsocket	Add support for static sockets

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2024-10-31 15:25 More information about USE flags

root #emerge --ask pcmciautils

Software Configuration

Card Information Structure

A PC-Card has a firmware called Card Information Structure (CIS). Some CISs are flawed, but can be patched at boot time. For those types of cards install sys-apps/pcmcia-cs-cis:

root #emerge --ask pcmcia-cs-cis

Resource database

Some old 16-bit PCMCIA cards works only if a resource database is set up. This effects only some x86 and x86_64 computers; not all are effected. To find out if the database is needed look at the controllers PCI-ID. The lspci tool works nicely for this task:

root #lspci | egrep --color -i "pcmcia|cardbus"

03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. Cardbus bridge (rev 21)

If the first two numbers are not zeros (here in bold: 03), then no resource database is needed. If they are zeros, then the database will need copied to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts:

root #cd /var/db/repos/gentoo/sys-apps/pcmciautils

root #ebuild pcmciautils-017.ebuild unpack

root #cp -p /var/tmp/portage/sys-apps/pcmciautils-017/work/pcmciautils-017/config/config.opts /etc/pcmcia/

Edit the file as needed.

Usage

The pccardctl command (part of the sys-apps/pcmciautils package) can be used to show information about the PC-Card controller and the inserted cards. It can also be used to load and unload PC cards.