PCI1620 with an integrated memory card reader

[Peter Stuge]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 07:13:56PM +0300, Cristian Onet wrote:
> There is only the firmware loader. Once the firmware is loaded it
> should
  ^^^^^^

> provide an ATA interface to any inserted memory card or at
> least this is what I understood

Sure. Obviously this is not what happens.


> This problem was already signaled at
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6991 but, I do not know
> why, the developers blamed the firmware loader.

Because it is the most likely source of error.

Many other memory cards and readers that do not require the
firmware loader work without problems.


> From what I can tell the firmware loader works just fine because
> if it would not (which would mean that we have a bad firmware
> loaded) the machine would freeze upon insertion of a card (I know
> from experience).

The firmware loader is not just responsible for transmitting a
firmware to the device.

The firmware loader is responsible for communicating with a device
and set it up so that it behaves like another, new, device.


> My question is: Is there a problem with the pata_pcmcia
> implementation or there should be a separate pata_pcmcia_pci1620
> implementation that would handle only this deviece?

The third party module is probably causing the problem by not
initializing the hardware correctly.

A separate driver for this special device is a possible solution, but
I think an attempt to fix the special initializer module is a better
first step. That needs to be reliable before a separate driver is
written anyway.

Do you have contact with the developers of the module? Could you
point them to these bugs and see if they can help get it fixed?


//Peter