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http://keesan.freeshell.org/bl/2.4.31/cardbus-2431.tgz  about 730K

My full-size vsp desktop kernel (with framebuffer, usb, sound) with a 
single change - enabled cardbus (under general, hotplug, pcmcia).
I will make a smaller laptop framebuffer kernel with cardbus enabled once 
I find my old config file.

PCMCIA left as modules.  This package includes three modules:
pcmcia_core.o
yenta_socket.o  - replace i82365.o in /etc/pcmcia/start
(the latter won't insert with this kernel anyway)
ds.o

Replace existing modules with these (keep a backup!!!)

With yenta_socket inserted, I was able to insmod ehci-hcd (with a USB 2.0 
pcmcia card - however it did not find the USB flash drive plugged into it) 
and RT2500, and some ath modules (I am missing one), all cardbus.
I don't actually have anything working yet but will post more later.

Other people can play with this kernel meanwhile.
It still works (yenta instead of i8*) with modem and wired network cards.

The non-cardbus kernels won't let you insert yenta_socket. And if you 
tried using them with i82365 (from the pcmcia package) there was an IRQ 
type error.  I had only wired ethernet working with cb_enabler, which you 
need if using the pcmcia source code for all your modules instead of 
kernel modules (and i82365 instead of yenta_socket).  I seem to have 
broken that somehow even with non-cardbus kernels. i82365 plus cb_enabler 
plus this kernel might also work but it might need to be the kernel i82365 
(which I did not enable).

This was the serendipitous result of my Gateway Solo 2000 having cardbus 
and PCMCIA problems.  It had worked with non-cardbus pcmcia cards 
including airo wireless, in BL, DSL and Puppy, and not with cardbus cards. 
Then suddenly stopped working with any PCMCIA cards (cardctl ident found 
nothing) with BL and DSL, with the warning:  No high memory space 
available.  Unable to map card memory.  Puppy still works with PCMCIA in 
the Gateway (???).

A search on this suggested adding some lines to config.opts (in BL3 this 
is included in config) excluding certain upper memory ranges so they can 
be used by cardbus cards which need lots of memory space.  Since BL has no 
cardbus support it would probably work without the high memory exclude 
lines 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff and one other similar.  (These reserve high 
memory for the cardbus drivers to use, I think).

config.opts in Puppy may be different from the lines in BL3 (from 
Slackware config.opts?).

At this point I decided since DSL does support cardbus, with a 2.4.31 
kernel, to try that kernel and modules in BL, and they let me insert 
yenta_socket (but I had some odd crashes).  The USB 2.0 card never did 
work in DSL.  DSL does not have the modules for any of my cardbus cards 
(it did work with ath5k somehow but I could not find it in the directory).
I was getting an unresolved symbols error trying to insert yenta_socket in 
the non-cardbus BL kernels.

At least two of my laptops accept cardbus cards but don't work with them. 
The other is 166MHz DELL Latitude.  Someone else reported buying a cardbus 
card for the same Gateway which did not work.  Supposedly cardbus cards 
are keyed and won't fit into a non-cardbus slot (16-bit).  My Solo 2300 is 
on a list of machines that should work with 32-bit cardbus cards.  So the 
cardbus controller may have gone bad (before whatever went bad that now 
keeps BL but not Puppy from working with regular PCMCIA).

I have one 120MHz Compaq Armada which lets me plug in a cardbus card, and 
a 133MHz Hitachi and Toshiba which do not.
Steven's collection included one laptop which I think could switch between 
cardbus and plain pcmcia in BIOS (see archives).

Cardbus has been around for longer than BL.

I will post the modules for ath_pci (I have three), acx, and rt2500 cards 
after I get them known working, and a cardbus smaller laptop framebuffer 
kernel.


Sindi Keesan