Re: PCMCIA not working on Panasonic Toughbook CF-29

[Michael .]

Thank you for your prompt reply Dominik, I have asked everyone in the
discussion on Notebook review to gather the information required and
either post it there so I can reply or post it here in the list if it
is from someone in the CC list.

Also thank you for replying to us all and not just on-list, none of us
are subscribed to teh list so if a reply is only on-list none of us
will receive it.

Cheers.
Michael.

On 15/10/2019, Dominik Brodowski <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 05:04:28PM +1100, Michael . wrote:
>> Good afternoon kernel developers
>> Please accept my apology for contacting you directly about this. A
>> small group of friends, some of whom are CCed here, have come together
>> to try and find a solution to a problem that originated with the
>> demise of kernel 2.6:32. First some background to the issue. We are
>> all users of Panasonic Toughbook CF-29 models (ranging from Mark 1
>> through to Mark 5). These Toughbooks have 2 PCMCIA card slots which
>> are used by a variety of people for different purposes. On the CF-29
>> Mark 1 through to Mark 3 these slots work without problem. On the
>> CF-29 Mark 4 and Mark 5 the last known kernel the top slot worked with
>> was 2.6:32. This has been confirmed all all major distros by most of
>> the small group of friends I mentioned earlier.
>>
>> Thinking it was just a kernel config issue I did some comparisons
>> between Debian 6 (Squeeze), Debian 7 (Wheezy), Ubuntu 10.04, and
>> Ubuntu 10.10. On all machines both slots functioned as they should
>> with Debian 6 and Ubuntu 10.04 but the top slot stopped working on
>> Mark 4 and Mark 5 machines on the next release with the next kernel. I
>> also tested Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 with the 2.6:32 and 2.6:35 kernel
>> and both slots worked with the 2.6:32 kernel but not the 2.6:35
>> kernel.With my comparisons I merged the config from 2.6:32 into the
>> current kernel for Debian 4.19 and rebuilt the kernel, no matter what
>> configuration changes I made the top slot still doesn't function on
>> Mark 4 and Mark 5 machines.
>>
>> This issue, and its apparent start, has been confirmed on all major
>> distro family groups. So this brings me, actually the small group of
>> dedicated Linux users who own Panasonic Toughbook CF-29s, to contact
>> you to ask for help in resolving this issue. I have some questions,
>> and I realise the 2.6:32 kernel is long gone now but I'm hoping this
>> is not a lost cause, what changes would have occurred between 2.6:32
>> and 2.6:33 that would have stopped the hardware working on Mark 4 and
>> Mark 5 CF-29 Toughbooks but not Mark 1 through to Mark 3? Would it be
>> possible to correct the problem so that the hardware on our machines
>> works as it should. While we are not kernel devs or even programmers
>> we are enthusiasts who love Linux and our machines and we are hoping
>> that together with you and the kernel dev group we can fix this issue
>> together.
>>
>> I have attached various tar.gz files with ls* outputs so you can see
>> the information we have so far. Thank you for taking the time to read
>> this.
>
> Is this with 16-bit PCMCIA cards, or with 32-bit CardBus cards? Either
> case,
> please provide the output of
>
> 	dmesg
>
> 	lspci -vvv
>
> and
>
> 	lspcmcia -v -v
>
> (ideally all for a working and non-working configuration).
>
> Thanks,
> 	Dominik
>