General

Q. What type of configuration will I need to do prior to installing the PC Card Software?

Q. Are there specific settings for the Systems BIOS the need to be set?

Q. How do I know what type of socket controller my system has?

OpenServer/UnixWare

Q. When trying to access an external SCSI device why does my system hang?

Q. Why am I getting an "Error: cannot automatically determine transceiver" when my system boots using a 3COM PC Card?

Q. Why can't I access my Fax/Modem card with the cu command?

Q. What type of configuration will I need to do prior to installing the PC Card Software?

A. If you are going to be using a NIC card under SCO Unix (OpenServer, UnixWare, etc.) make sure that you have run the network configuration utility to set up you network card.

A. If using a Fax/Modem card you need to make sure that one of your COM/Serial ports is available by disabling it in the BIOS and Operating System.

Q. Are there specific settings for the Systems BIOS the need to be set?

A. Set any plug-n-play or automatic setting to manual or legacy mode. This will eliminate the system from setting your hardware to a different IRQ or I/O when booting.

Q. How do I know what type of socket controller my system has?

A. Under MicroSoft Windows you click on Start, go to Settings, double-click Control panel, double-click on Systems icon, click on the Device Manager Tab and then expand the PCMCIA Socket by clicking on the plus (+) sign. You should now see what type of socket controller is in you system.

Q. I've installed the LSpccard package, inserted a supported PC Card into slot 0 and rebooted, but the PC Card was not detected. Why?

A. The lspcic driver is probably not loaded, which you can verify by entering:

modinfo | grep lspcic <Enter>

this should return something like:

84 fea09d5e 8a39 53 1 lspcic (PCIC PCMCIA adapter driver)

If nothing is returned, then the lspcic driver is not loaded. The most common reason for this is that the CardBus Controller is disabled in the BIOS. Go into your BIOS setup and make sure that the controller is ENABLED or set to CardBus/32-bit mode. Another possible cause could be the prior installation/removal of PCMCIA patches distributed by other vendors. If this is the case, we strongly recommend re-installation of Solaris, followed by installation of the LSpccard package. Lastly, it is possible that the device tree is corrupted. Copy /etc/path_to_inst to /etc/p2i and copy /etc/path_to_inst.old to /etc/p2i.old. Reboot with 'b -ar'. Answer 'yes' to re-create /etc/path_to_inst.

Q. I'm getting the following error message, what does it mean ?

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lspcic : Unable to find a free ISA IRQ

lspcic : Use your system BIOS setup program to disable

lspcic : COM1, COM2 or the parallel port, to free one up

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A. All of your ISA IRQ's are in use. You'll have to disable something in your BIOS to free one up. During boot up, enter your BIOS setup program and disable COM1, COM2, the parallel port, or anything else that you are not using and suspect may be using an IRQ.

Q. I'm getting the following error message, what does it mean ?

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lspcic : I/O address (0x2000) is already IN USE

lspcic : You must use a different value for cb-iobase

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A. The CardBus card you are using is trying to use I/O memory starting at location 0x2000, but the lspcic driver has detected that this memory is already being used by another device. Edit /kernel/drv/lspcic.conf and change the cb-iobase property to something else, i.e. 0x1000, 0x1500.

Our package includes a DOS program to help determine the correct I/O address. Copy the IOTEST.EXE program to a DOS bootable floppy disk, and boot into DOS. Use the IOTEST program to find 256 bytes of available I/O memory. For example, to check address 0x1500, enter the following :

IOTEST 0x1500 256

which will return either

I/O 0x1500 thru 0x15ff is available or

I/O 0x1500 thru 0x15ff is NOT available

Once you find 256 bytes of available memory, boot Solaris and change the cb-iobase property to the value that you've verified under DOS. If the IOTEST program hangs on a particular address, reboot and try another. See notes below for more info on this subject.

Q. My network card is recognized, but does not work. Any suggestions ?

A. First, you'll want to turn on debug messages for the lspcic driver and the LAN driver that you are using. Edit /kernel/drv/lspcic.conf and set pcic-debug=1;. Edit the xxx.conf file and set xxx-debug=1;, where xxx is the LAN driver that you're using, i.e. cbelx.

Most cases, it's usually either an I/O or an interrupt problem. After plumbing the interface, check the MAC address with 'ifconfig -a', if it's correct, then the problem is most likely with the interrupt.

Enable bootconf debug messages as desribed in the readme file and reboot. Edit the /boot/DEBUG.TXT file and search for 'irq'. Try setting the /kernel/drv/lspcic.conf interrupt-vectors property to the irq's (one at a time!) that you found in the DEBUG.TXT file.

For some, a valid MAC address does not guarantee a valid I/O address. Verify that the value of cb-iobase (in /kernel/drv/lspcic.conf) does not overlap with any addresses in the /boot/DEBUG.TXT 'PCI I/O Memory Map'. Try setting cb-iobase to 0x1000 or 0x1500, but make sure these values don't overlap with the values in DEBUG.TXT.

Q. Ok, I've installed the package, inserted my CardBus LAN card and rebooted. The Machine hangs with a blank screen. What should I do?

A. First of all, remove the CardBus card. You should be able to boot up now. Check your /var/adm/messages file for error messages that were written during the previous boot. This is most likely an I/O conflict, see the Q/A's above for possible solutions.

Q. I'm getting all zeroes for the MAC (hardware) address of my wireless card.

A. The I/O base address is probably conflicting with another device. Edit /kernel/drv/pcpsm.conf and try setting pcpsm-iobase to 0x400, 0x200, 0x1000, 0x1500, and 0x2000, one at a time, until you find one that works.

Q. I can't get DHCP or /etc/hostname.xxx (xxx == driver inst. name) to work.

A. You'll need to move /etc/rcS.d/S99initpcmcia to /etc/rcS.d/S10initpcmcia in order to bring up the PC card before the network.

Q. OK, I've done the above, but still can't get the 3Com 575 card to autoconfigure.

A. The 575 driver is slow to come up, so slow, that the network starts up before the driver is ready. The simplest way to fix this is to add a delay script to hold off the network configuration. You'll need to create the file /etc/rcS.d/S29sleep, which contains the following:

#!/bin/sh

case "$1" in

'start')

sleep 30

;;

*)

exit 1

;;

esac

You'll need to 'tune' the sleep value (30 seconds) to fit your system.

Q. I've got a SOCKET Communications EA LAN Card, which is recognized and configured properly, but the hardware (MAC) address is all zeroes.

A. Edit /kernel/drv/lspcic.conf & change pc-iobase to 0x300 & re-boot.

Q. When trying to access an external SCSI device why does my system hang?

A. The most common problem when trying to access an external SCSI device is that there is an IRQ conflict. Some of the Laptops come with PCI Bus that uses IRQ 11 and cannot be changed. Using OpenServer 5.0.4/5 the user can specify which IRQ setting the SCSI card can be set to by following the instructions below:

Note: Make sure you remove the scsi device with the mkdev script prior to making the following changes.

1. Change directories - cd /etc/conf/pack.d/lscs

2. Edit the space.c file - vi space.c

3. Change the SCSI IRQ from 11 to an available IRQ, save and exit the file.

4. Change directories - cd /etc/conf/pack.d/smad

5. Edit the space.c file - vi space.c

6. Search for irq ... user would see the line below:

aha_change smad_irq[SCSI_NSMAD];

change the line above to look like the following

aha_change smad_irq[SCSI_NSMAD] = {1,IRQ};

Where IRQ is insert the interrupt vector you changed the lscs file to.

7. Save the space.c file.

8. Now do a mkdev on the device and once installed relink the kernel and reboot the system.

Q. Why am I getting an "Error: cannot automatically determine transceiver" when my system boots using a 3COM PC Card?

A. The network card was not connected to the network when the system was booted.

A. If you are using twisted-pair media type, you need to do the following:

1. Remove the device using netconfig and re-install leaving the media type set to auto before exiting (DO NOT RELINK).

2. Change directories - cd /etc/conf/pack.d/e3E

3. Edit the space.c file - vi space.c

4. Search for xcvr ... you should see 4 lines but with one only having an = 4 specified.

5. Replace the 4 with a 2 ... save and exit this file.

6. cd /tmp and Re-install the lspcmcia.tar file starting with the tar xvf lspcmcia.tar command.

7. relink and reboot the system.

Q. Why can't I access my Fax/Modem card with the cu command?

A. The device is not available in the /usr/lib/uucp/Devices file.

To make the device available do the following:

cd /usr/lib/uucp <enter>

vi Devices <enter>

add in a line that looks like the following:

Direct ttya2 - 19200 direct

note: if using different com port replace ttya2 with ttyaX. 'X' being the com port selected.

save the file and try accessing the device again.

A. The com port may still be enabled in the systems BIOS. Reboot the system and disable the port in the BIOS. Log into the system and try accessing the device again.