PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

mculey · 2004-03-16 14:06:39

Okay, I've got a nice new, fully updated install of Arch running on my Inspriron 8600. Everything works beautifully except for the pcmcia. I'm running the newest 2.6 kernel from arch and have installed pcmcia-cs. I've modified the config.opts to remove the memory address that, if left in, crashes all Dell laptops. The pcmcia daemon starts at start up and you can see the interrupts assigned for pcmcia in /proc/interrupts. dmesg lists the cardmgr as listening to one socket. All seems just hunky dory until I insert a card. When I insert a card I get nothing. No beeps, no lights, no errors messages. Nothing. Nada. At this point I'm at a complete loss as to what could be wrong. I've even gone in and changed the polling interval for the cardmgr to 1 second to see if that would help. Nope. I really want my pcmcia working as to use my wireless network I'm forced to be in Windows. Sigh...ideas anyone?

wdemoss · 2004-03-16 14:39:17

No ideas on the pcmcia, sorry.

But i have another question, why do you say you need to be in windows to use wireless network? Did your inspriron come with an internal mini-pci card?

-wd

Xentac · 2004-03-16 16:21:17

What does cardctl ident say?

That does sound rather strange. I can't think of anything myself... no errors when loading anything?

Moo-Crumpus · 2004-03-16 16:58:46

Hi,

I have unsolved problems since arch upgraded 2.6.3 kernel to 2.6.4. Fortunately, I have a copy of my kernel / modules / system.map, and therefore I still boot my old kernel. When I boot the new one, all modules load proper, but the pcmcia wireless card won't do. But, that differs from your results, it's lights are still blinking, in 2.6.4.

Booting 2.6.3 - and the wifi is fine.

As ther is no difference in configurations or modules (same rc.conf etc), I think it is the kernel 2.6.4, at least it's config, or the pcmcia_cs is not recompiled to fit 2.6.4.

Read the bug report, or add something.

Xentac · 2004-03-16 17:04:18

Just to straighten something out here. The pcmcia-cs package doesn't include any kernel modules. All pcmcia kernel modules are compiled with the kernel. So, in theory, upgrading to 2.6.4 and nat upgrading the pcmcia-cs package shouldn't be a problem. At the same item, I don't know what the problem is. I haven't had time to do anything in the last week.

mculey · 2004-05-27 06:08:57

Okay so I'm back and this still doesn't work and I'd like it fixed.

So, here's what we have:

(Without card then with card inserted)
cardctl ident:
Socket 0:
no product info available

cardctl ident:
Socket 0:
no product info available

So cardctl just isn't seeing the insertion. So let's insert it manually, right?

cardctl insert 0:
ioct(): No such device

huh? I'm assuming it's telling me there's not a card in the slot but there is. I don't know enough about the underpinnings of pcmcia to dig any further. I've tried all the suggestions from the pcmcia-cs documents concerning issues like this and nothing works. Someone help me please!

farphel · 2004-05-27 11:03:34

Have you tried putting the card in prior to booting? I know that defeats the purpose of the plug-and-play nature of pcmcia, but that's how I use mine and I don't have any problems. I've got an Inspiron 8000 and an Linksys card.

Actually, come to think of it, there was some timing issue. I believe my DAEMONS line in /etc/rc.conf needed a slight tweaking. I made sure 'pcmcia' was listed very early in the sequence, and network was listed toward the end of the sequence. (I don't have my laptop handy, or I'd get the exact line).

HTH,
farphel

mculey · 2004-05-27 13:17:01

Cards are never recognized period. During boot, during insert, anywhere. dmesg shows the successful startup of the pcmcia servicce but that's as far as we get. After that it just doesn't respond to any card insertions.

farphel · 2004-05-27 16:31:36

I'll take a closer look at my setup when I get home tonight and see if I can add any useful troubleshooting ideas.

farphel · 2004-05-28 01:00:00

Not sure if this will be any help, but my setup is a Linksys AP and Linksys WPC11 pcmcia card (older model). Like you, I've commented out the port range that crashes Dells. Other than that, I just installed the stock 2.6 kernel and pcmcia-cs package. As I stated before, I keep my wireless card plugged in prior to boot.

I know you mentioned being able to do wireless under Windows, so we know the hardware works. However, you never mention what card/AP you have. What card/chipset do you have? Have you googled to make sure it's supported?

Output of 'cardctl ident':

[root@i8k log]# cardctl ident
Socket 0:
  no product info available
Socket 1:
  product info: "Instant Wireless ", " Network PC CARD", "Version 01.02", ""
  manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002
  function: 6 (network)

Snippets from /etc/rc.conf:

eth0="dhcp"
eth1="dhcp"
INTERFACES=(lo eth0 eth1)
DAEMONS=(syslogd klogd pcmcia hdparm crond network alsa archstatsrc)

Snippets of dmesg:

PCI: Enabling device 0000:02:0f.0 (0000 -> 0002)
Yenta: CardBus bridge found at 0000:02:0f.0 [1028:00a4]
Yenta: Using CSCINT to route CSC interrupts to PCI
Yenta: Routing CardBus interrupts to PCI
Yenta TI: socket 0000:02:0f.0, mfunc 0x05033002, devctl 0x64
Yenta: ISA IRQ mask 0x0098, PCI irq 10
Socket status: 30000006
PCI: Enabling device 0000:02:0f.1 (0000 -> 0002)
Yenta: CardBus bridge found at 0000:02:0f.1 [1028:00a4]
Yenta: Using CSCINT to route CSC interrupts to PCI
Yenta: Routing CardBus interrupts to PCI
Yenta TI: socket 0000:02:0f.1, mfunc 0x05033002, devctl 0x64
Yenta: ISA IRQ mask 0x0098, PCI irq 10
Socket status: 30000010
Intel ISA PCIC probe: not found.
Databook TCIC-2 PCMCIA probe: not found.
...
...
cs: IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff: excluding 0x170-0x177 0x200-0x207 0x370-0x37f 0
x4d0-0x4d7
cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff: clean.
cs: memory probe 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff: clean.
orinoco.c 0.13e (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
orinoco_cs.c 0.13e (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
eth1: Station identity 001f:0000:0000:0008
eth1: Looks like an Intersil firmware version 0.8.0
eth1: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth1: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth1: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth1: MAC address 00:03:2F:02:A8:B0
eth1: Station name "Prism  I"
eth1: ready
eth1: index 0x01: Vcc 5.0, irq 3, io 0x0100-0x013f
blk: queue d7ccba00, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
Disabled Privacy Extensions on device c0569f60(lo)
eth1: Error -110 setting multicast list.
eth1: Error -110 setting multicast list.
eth1: Error -110 setting multicast list.
eth1: Error -110 setting multicast list.
eth1: New link status: Connected (0001)
eth1: no IPv6 routers present

Snippet of /var/log/messages:

May 25 21:19:30 localhostf cardmgr[533]: executing: './network check eth1 2>&1'
May 25 21:19:30 localhostf cardmgr[533]: + usage: /sbin/ifuser [-v] interface [target ...]
May 25 21:19:30 localhostf net.agent[9194]: remove event not handled
May 25 21:19:30 localhostf cardmgr[533]: exiting
May 25 21:19:32 localhostf exiting on signal 15
May 27 20:30:15 localhostf syslogd 1.4.1: restart.
May 27 20:30:16 localhostf cardmgr[532]: watching 2 sockets
May 27 20:30:16 localhostf cardmgr[533]: socket 1: Linksys WPC11 11Mbps 802.11b WLAN Card
May 27 20:30:16 localhostf net.agent[540]: how do I bring interfaces up on this distro?
May 27 20:30:16 localhostf net.agent[540]: add event not handled
May 27 20:30:13 localhostf net.agent[341]: how do I bring interfaces up on this distro?
May 27 20:30:13 localhostf net.agent[341]: add event not handled

mculey · 2004-05-28 02:01:56

Whether or not the card is supported (which I know it is because I've used it with other distros) the cardmgr should respond to an insertion event. It should at the bare minimum receive error messages in the log files. I get nothing. That's what is so frustrating about this. The insertion event just doesn't happen. And I know there's nothing wrong with the pcmcia hardware because it works in windows. I'm about to the point where I'm going to install another distro (like Fedora) just to see how it is configured and if it works. I've seen on the linux laptop site that pcmcia works out of the box for other distros but there's not a how-to for arch. once I get through this i will put one out there that's for sure. Anyway, thanks for the info. I'll keep this thread updated as I find out more...

Bitruder · 2004-06-03 18:03:34

I get the EXACT same thing. I just installed Arch last night actually and I'm trying to get my DWL-650+ card working (had it working fine in Fedora). Right now, I get absolutely nothing even though PCMCIA seems to be working fine. It always says there is no card in the socket. If I get it working, I'll let you know.

mculey · 2004-06-04 02:36:11

I did end up doing an install of Fedora to see if the pcmcia worked in it and low and behold, it worked just fine. The disappointing thing was that all the configuration was the same as in Arch. My only conclusion was that there is something about how the kernel and pcmcia-cs are compiled in Arch that causes the pcmcia to not work with my particular hardware. Now, I haven't taken the time to test this theory so I could be way off base. To solve my problem I cut myself a VERY long cat5 cable. It's a pain in the arse but it works for now. When I get around to rolling my own kernel and pcmcia-cs I'll let ya'll know what happens.

Bitruder · 2004-06-04 12:12:59

I actually compiled my own kernel last night because of this. I just left it on last night and didn't have time to try it out before I left for work, but I will when I get home. I'm also going to build the latest 2.4 kernel to see if I can get it to work with that. Do you know the make of your PCMCIA slot?

mculey · 2004-06-04 14:39:18

lspci reports it as:
CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments: Unknown device ac44 (rev 02)

I don't remember the model but I do know it uses the yenta_socket module for the pcmcia stuff.

Also, I've compiled my own kernel before without it working but I've never recompiled the pcmcia-cs package. I have a feeling it's a combination of the two.

Arch Linux

#1 2004-03-16 14:06:39

PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#2 2004-03-16 14:39:17

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#3 2004-03-16 16:21:17

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#4 2004-03-16 16:58:46

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#5 2004-03-16 17:04:18

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#6 2004-05-27 06:08:57

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#7 2004-05-27 11:03:34

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#8 2004-05-27 13:17:01

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#9 2004-05-27 16:31:36

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#10 2004-05-28 01:00:00

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#11 2004-05-28 02:01:56

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#12 2004-06-03 18:03:34

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#13 2004-06-04 02:36:11

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#14 2004-06-04 12:12:59

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

#15 2004-06-04 14:39:18

Re: PCMCIA Problem on an Inspiron 8600

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