[SPARCbook] Re: Start-from-scratch full procedure for PCMCIA ethernet card?

[Chris Powell]

On Sun, 4 Aug 2002 18:36:11 -0400, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 09:57:25AM +0100, Chris Powell wrote:
> > If I remember correctly, just inserting the card will wake up the PCMCIA
> > daemon (provided you have it installed - check for PCMCIA drivers using
> > pkginfo) and create the /dev entries (not sure you even need to boot -r).
> > If your card doesn't say on it '3c589B' or '3c589C' then it's probably
> > NOT supported - even the plain '3c589' and other '3cXXX' cards are not
> > supported.
> > 
> > So, do this:
> > 
> > 1. Check the card is 3c589B or 3c589C.
> > 2. Check you have PCMCIA drivers installed - pkginfo | grep -i pcmcia
> > 3. Reboot machine with boot -r (to be on the safe side).
> > 4. Check /dev and /var/adm/messages for any reference to 'pcelx'.
> 
> Okay, let me run this by the numbers and see if you or somebody can't
> figure out where I've blown.
> 
> 1. Card is 3c589C.  Looking good.
> 
> 2. 'pkcinfo | grep -i pcmcia" yields
> 
> 	system      TADpcmcia      PCMCIA S/W
> 
> so that looks good.

I believe this is the slot hardware level PCMCIA driver, i.e. the driver
to talk SBus-PCMCIA. Stock Solaris uses a different driver as the Sun
SBus-PCMCIA card has a different chip to that used for the same task in
the SPARCbook.

If the above is the ONLY entry you see from pkginfo, then you appear to
be missing the PCMCIA Ethernet driver pcelx. You will need to install
this from a Solaris CD.

> 4. /dev and /var/adm/messages appear to be uncontaminated by anything
> having to do with pcelx. ;-)  Inserting the card post-boot doesn't seem
> to cause this happen either, although the system does "see it", i.e.
> I can run NCE2_pcmcia and note that the card's been identified as being
> in slot 0.

Hmmm, NCE. This was removed from Tadpole Solaris 2.6 and later - are
you using 2.5.1 or earlier? If so, I'm not sure the pcelx driver is
available for that release (check on your Solaris CD for other PCMCIA
packages) - SUNWpcelx would be a good start.

I'm using Solaris 2.6 with the Tadpole patches. You can download the
Tadpole drivers from the Tadpole ftp site (or used to be at least)
should you have a Solaris 2.6 CD and wish to upgrade.

> I don't see any running process which corresponds to this; however, this
> machine does have functional PCMCIA because I can pop in a modem card
> (indicates US Robotics 56K with XJACK) at which point the system recognizes
> it, turns on the little card indicator box in the LCD display, and then
> proceed to use it just fine.  So I'm confused: is this what you were
> referring to, or did you mean a continuously running process that
> spends most of its time sleep()ing?

I don't have my SPARCbook with me so can't figure exactly what goes on
when a card is inserted, but I guess it's part of the kernel itself, not
a separate process.

So, my guess is you are missing the pcelx package from your installation.
You will hopefully locate this on a Solaris CD and install it - try the
card again after rebooting.

Hope this helps!


ChrisP.