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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

We have two card readers (Sandisk CF and SM; Olympus SM).

A friend's XP (on a 1.3GHz HP) could read the CF and SM in Sandisk but not 
the Olympus SM.

We have three USB computers (one Compaq=ohci, one Gateway/Intel=uhci, one 
MTI probably unci, and four add-on cards (three Opti=ohci, one Via=uhci).
And two laptops with USB.

DOS works (with Sandisk reader and Argus camera) with most of these, but 
not with the MTI desktop or one of the two laptops (HP?).

Slackware 9.1 CD works (once we replaced the drive, which only read OEM 
CDs) in the MTI computer that won't work with DOS (I will try it with the 
VIA card, which crashed the same way in DOS, and the laptop that won't 
work with USB in DOS but appears to be okay with Redhat).
It read the CF card in the Sandisk reader, in the MTI, with several 
add-on cards and in the Compaq.

SW91 complained it was out of memory (16MB) but then booted the next time 
but not the two times after that.  I can't manage to force the 8MB DIMM 
into the dratted DIMM slot which is under two hard drives.  I suppose just 
over 16MB is pretty good for something running in ramdisk with a large 
all-purpose kernel.  Why would 16MB work the first time only?  The 
software can't have changed.  It worked with the onboard USB, then I 
replaced that with the add-on card and disabled onboard, then I put back 
the onboard and it would not boot either time.  It also would not boot in 
the one CD-ROM drive that only read OEM CDs (we had a few others like this 
too, including a 40X).  It took a few minutes to look for pcmcia slots 
etc. but was a lot better than DSL.

For the SM card I got the same error message as for David's kernel 2.4.31.
David, did you specifically put the line about my vendor and product id in 
your kernel, or just answer Y to questions about usb storage, in this 
latest kernel?  (I can't tell if it works because it won't boot for me).

So DOS won't handle all the computers we might run into on a trip, even 
for CF cards, and Slackware 9.1 reads our standard CF cards on more USB
computers, but not my SM card.  And even XP can't handle my SM card in one 
of the readers (Olympus) unless I bring along the driver for it (which is 
probably 20 MB in size, and I know it comes on a CD for Olympus cameras).

So I look forward eagerly to getting this kernel to boot and work with my 
smartmedia card, in any computer with a floppy drive and 16MB RAM.

Just in case, we also found our other serial download cable--the bought 
one, with two ferrite cores, which might run faster than our 19,200 
homemade model.