From owner-freebsd-questions  Thu Mar 22 19:52:14 2001
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To: "Thomas Vestergaard" <veedub@post6.tele.dk>
Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: pcmcia problems. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 22 Mar 2001 18:38:52 +0100."
             <000801c0b2f6$f9092940$1032a8c0@main> 
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 19:52:07 -0800
From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net>
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Thomas,

First, I use FreeBSD on my laptop and desktop (as well as some
servers) and I'm quite happy with it for all of these. Linux does have
some advantages, though. PC-card support is certainly one of
these. But I prefer FreeBSD overall by a fairly wide margin and
PC-card support should be MUCH better in V5. (It's being totally
re-written.) 

If it means anything, I regularly attend North American Network
Operators meetings. The attendees are typically network engineers from
many of the larger network providers around the world. (Yes, I know
Nor5th American implies a less international group, but it's open to
all.) FreeBSD is run by a LARGE percentage of those in attendance on
their laptops. Probably second to Windows.

To fix the problem of the card not configuring in time, add the
line:
pccardd_flags="-z"        # Additional flags for pccardd.
to your /etc/rc.conf file. But wait until you get it working before
doing this.

First, you must add the line:
pccard_enable="YES"      # Set to YES if you want to configure PCCARD devices.
to /etc/rc.conf. Without that, pccards won't ever configure.

The most common problem with PC-cards in FreeBSD is IRQ selection. The
file /etc/defaults/pccard.con has a line hear the top that lists
available IRQs. It's almost alway wrong.

Create the file /etc/pccard.conf and copy that line into it. Then edit
it to show only those IRQs that are really free on your system. You
can use "dmesg | grep irq" to get an idea what is in use. Never use 2.

My file contains:
irq	7 8 9
The defaults of 3 and 5 are almost always taken.

You should get a message that the card as been inserted followed in a
few seconds with a message containing the name of the card. After a
few more seconds it should be ready to go. (This is somewhat dependent
on whether you use DHCP.)

Hopefully this will get you running. If not, send back more
information. I use a Xircom and am quite happy with it.

R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman@es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634


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