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A neighbor gave it to me today.  (She said it was a cardbus card).

pcmcia source code documentation lists F5D6020 as orinoco_cs, but
they changed to atmel chip in rev 2 (and to cardbus in rev 3).

I first tried orinoco and was told it needed firmware loaded.

2.4 kernel source code documentation agreed, and offered a link, but 
the downloaded files were for kernel 2.6 only.

Online research reveals that it needs pcmf502rd.o.  Found the 
atmelwlandriver package and read the README.  Makefiles for 2.4 and 2.6.
make config - build all (I tried Y or N).
make all - Building   -  nothing else ever happened.

Someone else with kernel 2.4 was unable to build the drivers. (Maybe the 
problem is with gcc 2.95.3?  Surely someone got the 2.4 Makefile to work 
for SOME card or it would not be there).

grep pcmf5024d - the driver is mentioned  in 2.6 Makefile only.

So this card is not supported by kernels older than 2.6 even though it is 
NOT cardbus.  I have cardbus cards with 2.4 support (ath and acx).

Puppy Linux thinks it uses atmel_cs.o  (but I did not test if it really 
worked).

Kernel 2.4 has built-in kernel support for atmel but I doubt for this 
particular card.  There were about 10 different atmel cards which need
the firmware loaded before the pcmcia drivers.

kernel 2.2  - Jan 1999 1.8M lines code 10MB tar.bz2
kernel 2.2.26 - Feb 2004               19MB
kernel 2.4  - Jan 2001 3.4M lines      19MB 
kernel 2.4.37.9, Feb 2010  	       30MB
kernel 2.6.0 -  Dec 2003  5.9M lines   32MB
kernel 2.6.21.7	- Aug 2007	       42MB  PATA drives are hda 
kernel 2.6.30.5 - Aug 2009 12M lines   57MB  PATA drives are sda
current stable 2.6.32.7 - Jan 28 2010  63MB

BL1 - 1999  kernel 2.2.16
BL2 - 2000         2.2.16
BL3 - ?            2.2.16
BL3.5 - Mar 2007   2.2.26

The Wikipedia article for Basiclinux still refers to Slackware 3.5
and IceWM.  Corrected on the talk page.

The smaller 2.2 kernel fits on a floppy disk better.

kernel 2.4 - USB storage support.  The devices came out after
USB ports (found in some 1998 computers), probably after Jan 2001.
Don't work in 2.2 (with maybe a few exceptions).  USB storage was not
well backported to 2.2 kernel (though it works fine in Win98 and DOS).

The Belkin card was discussed Dec 31, 2003.  It probably first came out 
after kernel 2.6 and nobody bothered to backport it to 2.4.

There were SATA drives in 2003, and we were just given our first one. We 
have a couple of working 2003 computers (and one 2005 model). Even 2.4.27 
should support libata which is a SATA (???).  Have not yet installed BL2 
to it.

In order to support 7 year old hardware, we need a 2.6 kernel.

I may compile 2.6.21.7, which is 2/3 the size of the latest greatest
and 2 years newer than our newest hardware.

The changelog for 2.6.22 is 3.8MB (7.2MB for 2.6.32 - nearly as big
as the 2.2 kernel source).  Fix legousb driver....


Sindi Keesan