Author |
Message |
Chris Thorne
Joined: 16 May 2007 Posts: 3
|
Posted: Sat 19 May 2007, 17:31 Post subject:
No PCMCIA networking with "nopcmcia" boot option? |
|
I have an old Thinkpad 560X here and, on a lark, decided to try a Puppy install. This system has no internal CD drive (clumsy external SCSI is possible) and can not be booted from USB. It will boot from a PCMCIA flash drive, though.
I syslinuxed a flash drive, performed a frugal install of Puppy 2.15CE, and found that the boot would freeze on "Loading kernel modules" unless the "nopcmcia" flag was set. Once that was done, Puppy loaded nicely. Very impressive! Extremely impressive. The 560X used to run RedHat 2.4.7, but was groaning and unusable with that. And configuring RH was grueling. It took me a week to get to the point with RH that took a few hours with Puppy.
OK, so Puppy is up and running. Would Puppy config my wi-fi with an old Orinoco Gold card as easily? I fired up the networking wizard. Regrettably, no. Autoprobe failed. Manual selection of the Orinoco module failed.
Ah! Wait a minute. I had forgotten that I had booted with "nopcmcia" set. The kernel won't be able to see the Orinoco card.
Invoking cardctl, dmesg, and lsmod make it clear that there is no PCMCIA support of any kind currently active.
Since I seem to need that -nopcmcia flag to get up and running, what would be the suggested procedure to manually instantiate PCMCIA and Cardbus support once Puppy has loaded?
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
sphetr2
Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 18
|
Posted: Sun 09 Sep 2007, 09:56 Post subject:
PCMCIA networking with "nopcmcia" boot option |
|
I'm having the same problem. How can I do this?
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
rcrsn51

Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Posts: 11889 Location: Stratford, Ontario
|
Posted: Sun 09 Sep 2007, 12:08 Post subject:
|
|
I wonder what happens if you do a frugal install to the hard drive and boot from there instead of from the PCMCIA port. Will the "nopcmcia" option still be necessary?
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
sphetr2
Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 18
|
Posted: Sun 09 Sep 2007, 12:16 Post subject:
|
|
Puppy is installed to hard drive already. If I boot without "nopcmcia", the computer turns off at "loading kernel modules...".
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
sphetr2
Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 18
|
Posted: Tue 11 Sep 2007, 22:33 Post subject:
|
|
Bump. Please help! Isn't it just a simple modprobe or something?
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
tempestuous
Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 5468 Location: Australia
|
Posted: Wed 12 Sep 2007, 02:24 Post subject:
|
|
First, many such problems are not specific to Puppy Linux, and are best dealt with by a general web search.
It appears that the Cardbus interface in the Thinkpad 560X is a Texas Instruments 1250, supported (but problematic) with the yenta_socket module.
Code: | modprobe yenta_socket
rm /var/run/cardmgr.pid
cardmgr |
Now you can load the module for your Orinoco Gold
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
sphetr2
Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 18
|
Posted: Wed 12 Sep 2007, 12:31 Post subject:
|
|
Sorry if I came off a little rude there.
Anyway, when I said I'm in the same situation, I didn't mean the exact same. I should've been more clear...
I have a Netgear WG511 v3 wi fi card that works with ndiswrapper. The problem is, when I boot with nopcmcia, it won't work.
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
jonyo
Joined: 28 Dec 2006 Posts: 2725
|
Posted: Wed 12 Sep 2007, 14:10 Post subject:
|
|
I think I'm having this prob with a compaq presario 1220 lap. Looked here http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prodinfoCategory?lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=94983&lang=en but haven't found detailed info yet on the carbus interface (I'll search some more but in the meantime..). Any info? All I know at this point is when I boot with pup98 or more recent live CDs is that the pcmcia wifi (netgear ma401ra) card doesn't light up which I think means the pcmcia slot is not being recognized. When I boot this same setup in a similar ibm lap, the light on the pcmcia wifi card starts flashing on boot & works.
Maybe another boot option might work with the 1220 to make the pcmcia slot work?
tempestuous wrote: | First, many such problems are not specific to Puppy Linux, and are best dealt with by a general web search.
It appears that the Cardbus interface in the Thinkpad 560X is a Texas Instruments 1250, supported (but problematic) with the yenta_socket module.
Code: | modprobe yenta_socket
rm /var/run/cardmgr.pid
cardmgr |
Now you can load the module for your Orinoco Gold
|
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
sphetr2
Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 18
|
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2007, 17:02 Post subject:
|
|
bumpety bump bump
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
tempestuous
Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 5468 Location: Australia
|
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2007, 22:59 Post subject:
|
|
sphetr2, it's difficult to help you
i) you haven't told us what version of Puppy you are running.
ii) you haven't told us the details of your laptop.
iii) you haven't mentioned whether you tried the commands I suggested above to manually set up the cardbus interface.
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
sphetr2
Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 18
|
Posted: Sun 16 Sep 2007, 10:02 Post subject:
|
|
tempestuous wrote: |
i) you haven't told us what version of Puppy you are running. |
Puppy 2.14
tempestuous wrote: |
ii) you haven't told us the details of your laptop. |
Dell Latitude CPi - 400 mhz pentium 2, ~256 MB RAM, 10 GB HDD, Netgear WG511 v3 wireless card.
tempestuous wrote: |
iii) you haven't mentioned whether you tried the commands I suggested above to manually set up the cardbus interface. |
Those are for the Thinkpad and Orinoco, which I do not have. If you really need e to run them, I will, but they probably won't work, amirite?
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
tempestuous
Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 5468 Location: Australia
|
Posted: Sun 16 Sep 2007, 13:47 Post subject:
|
|
sphetr2 wrote: | but they probably won't work, amirite? |
No, except for the orinoco module, of course.
Most modern cardbus interfaces are supported by the same "yenta_socket" module.
So the first 3 commands I mentioned should get your cardbus interface working.
To check
Code: | cardctl status
cardctl ident |
Regarding the WG511 v3, this contains the problematic Prism54-softmac chipset.
The only Linux driver for this chipset is the beta "prism54-islsm" driver available here -
http://dotpups.de/dotpups/Wifi/drivers-for-Puppy-2.12-to-2.14/
After installing the dotpet, load the islsm modules
Code: | modprobe islsm
modprobe islsm_device
modprobe islsm_pci |
If these modules load without error messages, a network interface (eth0 or eth1) should have been created. Run "ifconfig -a" and "iwconfig" to check. If the network interface is listed, you can now configure with the Network Wizard.
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
sphetr2
Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 18
|
Posted: Tue 18 Sep 2007, 19:17 Post subject:
|
|
Thanks! yenta_socket did the trick. I just added modprobe yenta_socket to rc.local.
|
Back to top
|
|
 |
|