Re: PCG-R505TE & FA511

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003 [email protected] wrote:
> okay, so i still am having troubles with my Sony Vaio PCG-R505TE and =
> it's NetGear FA511 PCMCIA CardBus network adapter.
> 
> seeing as the laptop was unable to get on the network it is naturally =
> rather difficult to get these text files onto this computer (i can't =
> exactly type out the output of dmesg) but i managed to get it all over =
> on a floppy...
[...snip...]
> when i type "cardctl insert" with the card already in, it beeps twice =
> loudly, which the docs say shows it recognized the card on the first =
> beep and then configured the network okay on the second. all is well so =
> far... but then if i type cardmgr the computer locks up and i have to =
> reboot...

The docs also say that it may give false or misleading information
if cardmgr(8) is not running.  I think you shouldn't be trying to run
cardmgr a second time! :-)

> anyone know what i'm doing wrong? a point in the right direction would =
> be utmostly appreciated.
> 
> thanks in advance,
> ezra

On my system, cardmgr is started up at boot time and runs continuously.
Check whether you trying to run it a second time.  Maybe that's the problem?

If you are trying to run it a second time, stop doing that. :-)  Instead,
after doing the "cardctl insert", try typing "ifconfig".  Do you see the
network device show up?  Also do a "ps -eaf" and look to see if cardmgr(8)
is runn, and if so, which child processes it has running.  I'm thinking
that it may have started up a configuration script for that card and
the script is waiting for something to happen (like a DHCP address?),
so the card never fully configures itself.

Here's what my "ifconfig" output looks like.  This is not a PC card NIC,
but your output should look similar (I removed my entries for lo0 and
ppp0):

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:80:AD:46:4A:D2  
          inet addr:192.168.1.1  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:5969606 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:5938913 errors:2 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:2
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 
          RX bytes:1410896818 (1345.5 Mb)  TX bytes:1550570947 (1478.7 Mb)
          Interrupt:10 Base address:0xec00 

You didn't say (in this message, anyway) which distribution you're
running, but doesn't your OS provide a configuration tool?  On RH, it
used to be "neat", not sure what it is now, as I don't have a RH install
more recent than 7.3 (the above output from ifconfig is from RH73).
After the card is inserted and you get your two beeps, you should be
able to use the GUI tool to configure it.

Well, it seems like I've been rambling...  I'll stop now and you can
decide if any of this helped at all. :-)
-- 
Frank J. Edwards
http://www.eec.com/
Training, Contract Programming, and Contract SysAdmin