[ale] PCMCIA: kernel vs Hinds

[Dow Hurst]

I've noticed that the nm256 driver under SUSE 8.x-9.0 still 
gives my Dell Latitude problems.  Pizza gave me advice to 
get the latest ALSA which has allowed the laptop to boot 
most of the time without hanging but it still hangs about 
half the time.  Under SUSE 7.1 I did not have this problem 
at all.

I just noticed when looking around at pcmcia docs (since 
unplugging the Linksys LAN/modem card helps promote a 
successful boot), that kernel based pcmcia is used by SUSE. 
  There is an option to use the older implementation by 
David Hinds.  The Hinds version gets high praise in the SUSE 
help blurb in /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia.  I am thinking about 
loading up SUSE 7.1 just to see what was used and if I could 
run SUSE 9.0 with whatever SUSE 7.1 had.  Or, if I could run 
a different distro like Gentoo or Slackware that would let 
me customize the sound setup a little more.  I've found out 
that I'll get the laptop back soon since a desktop is coming 
the way of that user.  So, I'd like to solve this for the 
current user under SUSE, if I can, for their sake.  But, 
later I could do whatever with the laptop.  Any thoughts on 
why removing the pcmcia card would promote the nm256 driver 
to load properly?  I haven't found any direct clues as to 
what is wrong from kernel docs, ALSA docs, and lot's of 
Googling.

Pieces of advice found so far:

Use vga=normal at boot instead of vga=791
Don't pay attention to mtrr messages in /var/log/messages
Use latest ALSA (helps but still hangs alot)
Use SonyViao hack (can't tell if helps on Dell Latitude)


The chip drives the sound and video but I don't know the 
right values to tell the driver some of the parameters that 
could be set to help define where video memory starts and 
sound memory stops.
Dow

-- 
__________________________________________________________
Dow Hurst                  Office: 770-499-3428            *
Systems Support Specialist    Fax: 770-423-6744            *
1000 Chastain Rd. Bldg. 12                                 *
Chemistry Department SC428  Email:   dhurst at kennesaw.edu   *
Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com *
Kennesaw, GA 30144                                         *
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