What are the commands I must pass through modprobe to manually set IRQ, I/O, etc.?

First off, you can't just decide to forget the hotplug system without doing something to disable it, otherwise it will continue to load modules it believes are a match for the hardware involved in any hotplug events (such as inserting your card) that it receives.

This is how it works: a hotplug event is detected by the kernel (which was compiled for hotplug), and the kernel sets up some env vars and calls /sbin/hotplug which processes the event and decides which hotplug agent(s) located in /etc/hotplug to invoke for the event and passes them the appropriate vars for the device and event. It's a bit more complicated as other files/scripts can get in the act once the agent gets control but that's about it. To forget about hotplug at the very least you need to rename or move /sbin/hotplug. But why?

Hotplug is really not the problem here, the problem is that the pcmcia module you believe should be loaded (i82365) refuses to load due to it not finding any hardware it believes it can work with. Yenta loads believing it can work with your pcmcia hardware, but is not fully functional (no pci irqs). From what I saw on mrbob's page, while he had the irq problems with yenta, he did not have the problem with i82365 failing to load or I failed to see him mention it, so something has got to be different between the 2 of your setups. It looks like he started with slack 8.1 and compiled the 2.4.20 kernel from it, you are starting with slack 9 which already has the 2.4.20 kernel.

You can set params via a modprobe (which is really at the core an enhanced insmod) that are listed for a module when you do a "modinfo <module name>", to see this in action, do a modinfo pcmcia_core, and then do a modinfo i82365, the parameter list and valid values are then listed and you may place them on the modprobe command line after the module name,

OK... I think I've come (close) to a solution.

"insmod i82365" gives "lib/modules/2.4.20/drivers/pcmcia/i82365.o.gz: unresolved symbol isapnp_find_dev"

Does this mean there is a problem with a driver, or MUST some settings be passed?

This is where I get a little 'out of the loop' as I use Red Hat instead of Slackware and I don't even recognize the word 'yenta'...(sounds Jewish), but I'll still let you know what's been happening with my sys, no new updates yet.

Yay! Some good news!

I downloaded the newest pcmcia-cs-3.2.5 package.

From its "pcic_probe" utility, it finds my "PCI bridge probe: Texas Instruments PCI1130 found, 2 sockets"

I 'make configure', 'make all' and 'make install', but the new i82365 driver still reports an unresolved symbol isapnp_find_dev...

At least I'm getting progress...

EDIT: Hmm.. pcmcia-cs won't make new drivers as the default kernel was compiled with support for my cardbus... Think it's necessary to re-compile a new kernel without support for i82365? or can I override it somewhere?

EDIT2: Nevermind... I should really STFU and read more... found a --force option in pcmcia-cs' config.

Well, you really should try to contact mrbob, he's got the same notebook, he should be able to help.

spectrum, you're not really as much out of the loop as you think, I use redhat 9 also and yenta_socket is of course used there too. You can find it in /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/pcmcia.(your kernel version may vary) It's a lower level driver for the pcmcia hardware, of which typically there are 3 in use today: yenta_socket by far the most popular, i82365, and tcic.

BTW: I *have* seen your "pues, hasta" before (it's unique), you emailed the link on the howto

UPDATE:

I've managed to get my PCMCIA working! (Yay!)

But now, when I insert the DWL-650+, syslog tells me:

-----------------------------------CUT----------------------------------
kernel: cs: cb_alloc(bus 5): vendor 0x104c, device 0x8400
cardmgr[62]: unsupported card in socket 1
cardmgr[62]: product info: "Wireless Network "...
cardmgr[62]: manfid: 0x0097, 0x8402 function: 6 (network)
cardmgr[62]: PCI id: 0x104c, 0x8400
-----------------------------------CUT----------------------------------

If I manually "insmod acx100_pci firmware_dir=/root/acx100-0.2.0pre5/"
I get

Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virutal address 0000000c
... A bunch of error code ...
Segmentation fault



lol slowly but surely making progress...

Man, you are really hanging in there, I got to admire that! It may depend on what you did to get the pcmcia working as to how to fix this, what all did you do?

I had been trying to compile the new pcmcia-cs-3.2.5 the whole time...
Normally, if the kernel already has pcmcia drivers installed, pcmcia-cs doesn't install drivers... I overrode this by running ./Configure --force

My second problem was that pcmcia-cs was placing the new drivers in /lib/modules/2.4.20/pcmcia

My kernel already had drivers in /lib/modules/2.4.20/kernel/drivers/pcmcia

So, everytime I did a modprobe/insmod i82365, it would load up the (original) kernel module (which didn't work).

I deleted the /lib/modules/2.4.20/kernel/drivers/pcmcia folder, as pcmcia-cs had made a whole new set of drivers in /lib/modules/2.4.20/pcmcia

Did a depmod -a, edited /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia to set PCIC=i82365

Next reboot, voila! It works!

Although, looking closer, dmesg is still giving some weird output on bootup



Not sure if the No IRQ errors really matter, since the adapter's irq's seem to be picked up later on...

akaBeaVis, thanks so much for your help you seem to be the only one responding! hehe... I wonder where everyone else is?.....

Everyone else probably has "a life", obviously, I don't

Well, not to discourage you (I'd really like to see you get this going) but, if you scroll up to post #15 on this page, you will see the same 'no known irq' errors that you have now, so what is showing you that the adapter's irq is picked up later on?

In any case, I would suggest you go now and re-compile the pre5 driver and overwrite the old one before continuing, the first one was compiled in a different scenario then you have now (pcmcia internal vs external). I have a feeling it will not want to compile now, I hope I'm wrong.

All went well.. did a "make clean; make" from ~/acx100/

Driver compiled OK... Copied acx100/src/acx100_pci.o to /lib/modules/2.4.20/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/acx100_pci.o

gzipped ok

/etc/modules.conf contains line

options acx100_pco debug=0x01 firmware_dir=/root/

/root/ contains WLANGEN.BIN, RADIO0d.BIN, WLANGEN.BIN

Insert DWL-650+... System gives one low beep (card not configured properly)

/var/log/messages produces


Any idea where those 'no irq known' errors could be coming from? I think that may be the "root" of the problem

From the looks of it, my cardbus wants ISA IRQs and not PCI... Time to go read up on pcmcia-cs again I suppose...

Oh yes, you're right on, without a known irq the card is not going to function (fully), this is the same situation as you had with yenta_socket. I've seen those same errors here and there on a couple of my own (desktops) boxes, they were caused by acpi I had to add "acpi=off to the boot prompt, is that a possibility for you? I seem to remember someone else here who seemed to have the same issue, try using the search button (upper right on this page ) and searching on "bootprompt" and put "akaBeaVis" in the optional words box, he passed some pci specific parameters to the boot prompt (it's been a while) and I think it helped to fix those unknowns.

acpi=off didn't help..

I'm going to try to compile a new custom2.4.20 kernel suited perfectly for my laptop... Hopefully that helps...

Make sure you include the wireless params as outlined in the readme that comes with the acx100 source. Also, mrbob seems to believe that if you compile the pcmcia support *into* the kernel as opposed to modules that things work better, he has your notebook, so I'm inclined to believe him, so be sure to make the pcmcia stuff "y" as opposed to "m".

I'm thinking the other way around... Why would he have to compile new drivers if the kernel already has its own modules?

Also, looking at his kernel config file, he has the default settings for PCMCIA enabled

This is really starting to bother me lol I can't get any sleep! Must.... get.... linux working..