PC_Card_/_PCMCIA

Wikipedia has an article on:

PC Card

PC cards (formerly known as PCMCIA) are supported by the pcmciautils and is since kernel 2.6.13 replacing the deprecated pcmcia-cs.

This guide is about setup the newer pcmciautils. You find a guide for the deprecated pcmcia-cs here and an howto to upgrade from pcmcia-cs to pcmciautils here.

Basic Setup

Kernel Setup

Bus options (PCI, PCMCIA, EISA, MCA, ISA)  --->
    PCCARD (PCMCIA/CardBus) support  --->
        <M> PCCard (PCMCIA/CardBus) support
        <M>   16-bit PCMCIA support (NEW)
        [*]     Load CIS updates from userspace (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)
        [*]   32-bit CardBus support

Additionally choose a brigde. Nearly all modern computers have a yenta-compatible bridge:

Bus options (PCI, PCMCIA, EISA, MCA, ISA)  --->
    PCCARD (PCMCIA/CardBus) support  --->
        <M> PCCard (PCMCIA/CardBus) support
        ---   PC-card bridges
        <M>   CardBus yenta-compatible bridge support

Software Setup

# emerge -av pcmciautils

If you are running x86 or x86_64, you maybe need a resource database. These sockets don't need a database:

• Au1x00
• HD64465
• M32R_PCC
• M32R_CFC
• MPC8xx
• OMAP
• PXA2xx
• SA1100
• SA1111
• VRC4171
• VRC4173

If your socket is not in the list, check lspci. Look out for your PC Card device, e.g.:

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

If the first two digit number of the number in front are zero (here 03), you need a resource database, else not. If, you have to edit /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to your needs (see this - no longer maintained - list).

# emerge -av pcmcia-cs-pnptools

Additionally you may need a CIS override (some kind of firmware). If so, install pcmcia-cs-cis:

# emerge -av pcmcia-cs-cis

Links

• pcmciautils website