Laptops and PC-Cards (WAS: Toshiba P20-S303)

[Daniel]

Sorry for the top-post but I've been seeing a few people say they've had install issues and 
whatnot with PC-Card controllers and incompatibilities and all... and a lot of mis-information 
and old web pages out there too... so I thought I'd insert a little generic information I came 
across while doing my own installs. 

What I've found (I have a ThinkPad) is that FreeBSD 5.1 *should*, given the right kernel 
parameters and all, work very well for most people.  To get around the kernel boot hang 
during the install, simply choose the "safe mode" boot option, which disables all PC-Card 
things for the install portion.   For my model and possibly many others (those using the Intel 
or IBM chipsets) you then need to build a custom kernel containing the pcic device and 
excluding the cbb device.  Obviously, those of you with chips supported by cbb should 
probably use that instead.  ;-)  There are a number of websites (and emails on this list) with 
info on some kernel parameters to tune if needed, as well.

But for the most part, the issues I've been seeing -- "5.x won't work on my laptop" / "4.x and 
5.x hang during boot probing" / "my typical and usually supported cards aren't detected 
properly" -- 5.1 offers a simple install solution and the most configurable kernel options of all 
the releases -- and with oldcard support as well, it goes back to anything (IIRC) that 4.x 
supported too.  

Please correct my gross over-simplification of things, but this boot feature certainly helped 
me install 5.1 (and I'd way rather have 5 than 4 on a laptop) and it looks like it might help a 
few others to not be afraid of the transition.  :)

However, if you still want to stick with 4.x on your laptop, you'll have to go other routes (e.g. 
boot option setting or using a custom bootdisk or something.  I can't help you there, as I've 
got 5 on mine. 

Peace to all,

 -- D
 <><


> Hey! I'd like to report this problem too, which apperantly some other models
> seem to have to, when trying to boot any of the kernels that are included on
> the install CDs (tried everything from 4.5 and above).
> 
> pci2: <network, ethernet> at device 2.0 (no drive attached)
> cbb0: <ToPIC100 PCI-CardBus Bridge> at device 4.0 on pci2
> pcib2: device cbb0 requested decoded memory range 0x2000000-0xc20fffff
> 
> It freezes here. In the other posting there was the hint to change the pnp
> option in the bios.
> The p20-s303 doesnt have that option. I cant hardly change anything lowlevel
> in the bios.
> Any other workaround? Maybe build a install disk with a kernel that doesn't
> include pccard?
> 
> Thanks and kind regards,
> 
> Florian Hoenig
> 
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-mobile
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-mobile-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> 
>