PCMCIA not working on Panasonic Toughbook CF-29

[Michael .]

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.

Regards.
Michael Findlay, and all the names in the CC list (and a few more in
the discussion at notebook review)

Attachment: Debian6_2.6_32_LSlists.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data

Attachment: Debian7_3.2.0_LSlists.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data

Attachment: Terminal output MX-19b2.1.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data

Attachment: Terminal Output Ubuntu 10.04.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data

Attachment: Ubuntu10-04_2.6_32_LSlists.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data

Attachment: Ubuntu10-04_2.6_35_LSlists.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data

Attachment: Ubuntu10-10_2.6_32_LSlists.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data

Attachment: Ubuntu10-10_2.6_35_LSlists.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data