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Analogue in CardBus of PCI Configuration Space in PCI.

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peas...@shaw.ca

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Jun 13, 2008, 6:43:12 PM6/13/08
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Folk,

What is the analogue in the CardBus of the
PCI Configuration Space in the PCI bus.

ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Card

Thanks, ... Peter E.

Mike Y

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Jun 14, 2008, 3:24:41 PM6/14/08
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<peas...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:2aaab752-8149-4af5...@d19g2000prm.googlegroups.com...

For all intents and purposes, CardBus IS hot-swappable PCI. (32bit 33Mhz)
When you insert a CardBus card, once it's identified as such, the PCCard
slot
controller will appears as a 'PCI Bridge' to the device, and the device
appears
as a normal PCI chip on a normal PCI bus behind a bridge. If you run tools
like PeekPCI or ShowPCI, you really can't tell at all that the device on the
CardBus card is behind the CardBus bridge other than by the chip types
involved
in getting there.


peas...@shaw.ca

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Jun 18, 2008, 11:16:41 AM6/18/08
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Mike and others,

On Jun 14, 12:24 pm, "Mike Y" <j...@user.com> wrote:
"... CardBus IS hot-swappable PCI."

So, in Linux, support for the CardBus might be integrated
into the PCI code. Yet it remains an optional kernel module.

And a machine should boot up from a PC card just as
easily as from a hdd.

I have 3 old Toshiba laptops. The oldest has PCMCIA;
the others, CardBus. None can boot directly from a
PC card. As I understand, the best that can be done is to
boot from a root partition on the hdd. /usr and /home can
be on the PC card and the swap must be on the hdd of
course.

Is there any reason not to integrate CardBus support
into PCI?

Thanks, ... Peter E.


Mike Y

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Jun 18, 2008, 8:36:18 PM6/18/08
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<peas...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:7363e3fc-85c7-4cd3...@i18g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
As long as it can handle the 'hot swappable aspect, no problem at all. You
just
have to realize there's a whole bunch of different stuff you may find on the
'user side' of the CardBus bridge, and the software would have to handle
that.

But be aware, the first BIOS that supported PCI configuration beyond bridges
other than for 'factory motherboard' devices was the National ExpressROM
BIOS. It would actually go 5 bridges deep to find and configure SOME
devices.
At the time, it was the ONLY BIOS to do so. And even now, I don't
know of any others but I've been out of touch with that kinds of stuff for
a while. I know about the PCI configuration of the bridges in the National
BIOS because I'm the one who wrote it...

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