Simple pc card interface for wlan cards?

[davorin]

Good afternoon (o;

Has someone done before a simple pcmcia controller for ethernet/wlan cards for embedded systems?

As I read somewhere I can just wire thrrough address/data bus and only have to generate control signals for it?

Though this probably won't work for 32-bit pcmcia wlan cards...hope they are still many 16-bit pcmcia cards out there (o;

 

[techie]

Looks like a neat idea. As far as I know, The PCMCIA interface is like an IDE interface which has a data bus, address bus and control lines. But that is as far as it goes for hardware. Even if you do get to connect the WLAN PCMCIA card to your controller board, you still need to have the software driver to get the card going. I dont think any manufacturer gives you those details for writing a driver for your own controller.

 

[davorin]

The system is running uClinux...so there are already drivers for ethernet/wlan cards...

 

[dll_embed]

What you need is a pcmcia host controller. Bascially it needs to map the system memory into attribute/IO/memory space. As for 16bit wlan card, it seems most of them in the market has no support for DMA. So you can simplify the design by ignoring the DMA part.

In linux, pcmcia is a layed model. The driver for wlan card is only for driving the wlan card. Before it works your PCMCIA system must work first. The pcmcia module itself consists of 3 modules. They are pcmcia.o, ds.o, and your pcmcia controller driver. The first two are hardware independent. The third one will deal with your designed controller.

regards

 

[jtirado]

:!:

I'm trying to connect a wireless Compact Flash into a linux system with a Nios. I use a Cyclone.

Perhaps we can help us mutually.

 

[davorin]

What a coincidence...

Was just looking at NIOS stuff lately and try to do some other stuff with Altera CPLD/FPGA's...like for exampl the simple PCMCIA interface and FPGA logic analyzer for old compact mac's (o;

 

[xczms]

to davorin: could you tell me where can i get the pcmcia driver for wlan which run on the uclinux ?

 

[davorin]

It's built in into (uC)linux....just have to enable it...and tell him what socket driver to use...

Probably you have to do your own socket driver if it is not included there...see linux-2.4.x/drivers/pcmcia.