From: bjaspan@GZA.COM (Barry Jaspan) Subject: Re: How many PCMCIA slots Date: 10 Aug 1993 22:11:46 GMT
In article <1993Aug10.201255.4324@twg.com>, "David Herron" <david@twg.com> writes:
|> I know there are SCSI & modem PCMCIA now. Are
|> any able to be used by Linux now? Can Linux use the flash cards at all?
|> Are there any audio PCMCIA cards now? Any of this going to happen in the
|> near future?
A modem by Megahertz and ethernet cards by D-Link and Socket Communications
work now. Each of these currently require a specific driver. To my
knowledge, no one has tried to get a flash memory card, scsi card, or audio
card (what is a pcmcia audio card?) to work.
I am working on quasi-generic PCMCIA support for Linux. It's moving along,
but slowly, because I have a real job. I might have an alpha version in a
couple weeks. It will be "quasi"-generic because PCMCIA cards do not appear
to have a sufficiently useful standard that everyone adheres to to make truly
generic support possible. Don't ask me for test versions, I'll announce it
when I'm ready.
|> How likely could Linux allow for removing interface cards while the OS
|> is up and running?
The code I am writing will recognize cards added and removed at runtime.
However, it will ultimately depend on whether the individual drivers can
handle it. For example, the serial device can have devices configured
dynamically, so modems will support hot changes. Currently, the network
device drivers cannot handle dynamic changes, so ethernet cards will have to
be present at boot time.
Note that, to my knowledge, all the Linux PCMCIA development done so far only
works with the Intel 82365SL PCIC controller. I think this is the most common
controller, but it is not universal; the Compudyne subnotebook, for one, uses
something else. Probably supporting other controllers won't be hard, but I
can't do the work without a machine to test it on.
-- Barry Jaspan, bjaspan@gza.com Geer Zolot Associates