[realtek] trying to compile cardservice driver

Donald Becker becker@scyld.com
Sun Oct 27 08:56:01 2002


On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, patrick thempel wrote:

>  bought a pcmcia networking card , cardbus, with
> rtl8139 chip.
> came with a module realtek_cb.o and a source
> rtl8139.c.

Very likely an old version.

> the module is for a 2.2.kernel (2.2.20 i think or
> somewhere close) and cant be used .

If it wasn't too heavily modified from my original version, the driver
should work with kernels from its release date back through 2.0, or in
some cases (although not rtl8139.c) back to the 1.1.73 kernel.

> i started with a 2.4.5 kernel , and since have
> upgraded my system to suse 8.0 (2.4.18 kernel).
> the upgrade in the hope maybe the card would be
> somehow magically work with the new system  ( which it
> didnt).

The rtl8139-base CardBus cards have worked for years with my driver.
Ask SuSE why they are not distributing a working driver.  (The correct
answer is "kernel politics", but they won't say that.)

> tried to get the card working with the rtl8139too
> module, i read somewhere that pcmcia is just pci in
> disguise. didnt work

CardBus is pretty much just hot-swap PCI with different electrical
specifications.  The original 16-bit PCMCIA, however, was a horrible
hacked-together combination of ISA and flash memory limitations.  The
best thing the PCMCIA people did was throw away everything but the
physical design of the 16-bit cards to come up with CardBus.
Unfortunately they did keep the horrible CIS table.

> gcc -DMODULE -D__KERNEL__ -O6 -c rtl8139.c
> -I/lib/modules/2.4.18-4GB/build/include
> -I/homes/public/pcmcia/include
> rtl8139.c: In function `rtl8139_probe':
> rtl8139.c:408: structure has no member named
> `base_address'

Hmmm, that's sounds like a modified driver.  You are on your own with
that one.

Try
mkdir /tmp/netdrivers/
cd /tmp/netdrivers/
ncftp ftp://ftp.scyld.com/pub/network/netdrivers.tgz
tar xfvz netdrivers.tgz
make
make install


You may need to add a table entry.  See:
   http://www.scyld.com/network/updates.html

-- 
Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Scyld Beowulf cluster system
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993