Understanding hardware support

Steve Holmes steve at holmesgrown.com
Tue Apr 27 13:38:18 EDT 2004


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The answers may also very depending on the age of your laptop.  For
most modern systems, merely recompiling the kernel with appropriate
PCMCIA supprt will do the trick.  Unfortunately, for my Hitachi
laptop, none of the kernel options would work.  It kept failing to
find PCMCIA device.  I was refered to the PCMCIA-CS card services
package containing external modules.  I went that route and it now
works.  It came up mentioning Cyrus card support or something.  I
don't have the logs in front of me right now to give you the exact
language.  I so far have been able to get a 3Com network card, a
belkin wireless LAN adaptor, and the included 56K modem all to be
recognized by the current PCMCIA support.  I used some other external
modules to get the wireless stuff going.  If you need it, I can scrape
up the finer details and pass them along to you.  It sounds like a lot
at the beginning but Now it works so I leave it alone and start
forgetting how it all works:).  It is rewarding, indeed to see it all
happen.

On Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 09:38:04AM -0700, Debee Norling wrote:
> Well the more I read, it seems the less I know.
> 
> I've been trying to figure out how to get Zipspeak to support at least one
> of my PCMCIA cards.  I have both wired and wi-fi network cards that I'd
> especially like to be using. (We run a neighborhood access point and also
> run our own SMTP server on a VAX with a home network already in place.)
> 
> I am grateful to everyone who kindly offered to help me privately, but I've
> learned so much from reading this list's archive, I'd rather ask general
> questions now so the answers are public.  In no way am I trying to snub
> anyone who offered to help off-list.
> 
> I'm really confused because I don't understand exactly how and where
> hardware support is implemented. Some docs tell me to recompile my kernel.
> Some docs say I need kernel patches. Some docs suggest I replace my kernel
> with another one on the distro's CD. Some docs tell me to enable
> auto-loading of modules. Some docs tell me to add modules.  Some docs tell
> me to simply edit some cryptic file. Some docs tell me hardware will be
> automatically detected.  This all sounds contradictory.
> 
> I need to be pointed in the direction of a how-to that gives clarification
> about how to troubleshoot whether hardware is supported/detected and what to
> do, and the order to do it in, when it isn't. I also have the additional
> complication of Speakup, which I assume means I can't just replace my
> kernel.
> 
> I'm not expecting device manager or plug-in-play; getting my hardware
> working is part of the fun. But I'm surprised that so much of what I read is
> inconsistent.
> 
> And guys, if I ever get this figured out, I'll write up something
> unambiguous to explain it to the clueless!!!
> 
> --Debee
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 

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