Re[2]: [Etherboot-developers] PCMCIA

[Anselm M. H. <an...@ho...>]

Hello Timothy,

>> This is not just a status announcement. I'd like advice on some points
>> in integration. Up to now, I defined CONFIG_PCMCIA (like CONFIG_ISA),
>> but propably the latter is needed for PCMCIA anyway. Not talking about
>> CARDBUS of course, but I don't have a CARDBUS card neither compatible

> Any idea how much work is left to implement cardbus?

Not too much, I think. It seems to be very PCI like, so you usually
activate the cardbus chip and the devices behind behave quite like PCI
hotplug'ed devices. They won't be configured (BIOS-side) probably, but
etherboot seems to be able to handle that (see VMware amd lance card,
which is not activated either and works fine).

>> Is there any sense in activating more than the first found PCMCIA NIC?

> Maybe, but I believe Etherboot just uses the first NIC it finds anyway.

Just the case you own one NE2k based and one 3com like board and
switch them between slots (e.g. NE2k has BNC transceiver, 3com board
is TP-only modem combo, which is quite realistic) - you only want to
use the ne2k board, but it is once the first, once the second board...
OK, this is constructed. For simplicitie's reasons, I'll only
implement activation of the first NIC-like board found (which is
stored inside the CIS area on the board; there are NIC-like,
modem-like, VGA-like...)

>> Is there any reason to use non-NIC PCMCIA devices in etherboot?

> Possibly, but I would concentrate on the stuff required for NICs.  It
> will be very cool if we can finally bring the PCMCIA NICs into the
> fold...

That's what I though too :-)

>> Does someone know about special requirements to PCMCIA enabler stuff,
>> except giving a NIC the right power & io address? Can I skip the work

> In the ISA_PNP support that I brought in for the 3c515 NIC, I ignore the
> Interrupt activation.  The NIC did not seem to mind and neither did
> Etherboot.

Fine. I'll just give it a try.

>> I'll surely release to CVS before leaving for a 6-day-holiday this
>> friday, so perhaps (well, it depends :-) you will have some working
>> demo stuff on LWE, but I cannot guarantee.

> Sounds like a lot of work.  I can't wait to see it hit the cvs.  

It *is* a lot of work. Mainly porting the pcmcia-cs stuff from the
linux kernel, stripping unused stuff, but there is so much nesting
(it's a three-layer-system, reducing it to one!) and
kernel-function-calls that it yet started costing me some hairs.

> Ken, as 5.2 is getting close will this be 5.3 code?

Will be 5.3 definitively. I delayed it to after my holidays as I got a
"reminder" from taxes to hand in my 2002 tax sheets till tomorrow :-(. So
it will not be ready for LWE, but as I expect 5.3 to be open by then,
I can just commit it freshly into 5.3 CVS when back, in a week or so.

Best regards,
 Anselm Martin Hoffmeister
 Stockholm Projekt Computer-Service
 <an...@ho...>