Subject: CardBus, anyone?
To: None <tech-kern@netbsd.org>
From: Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil>
List: tech-kern
Date: 08/12/1998 11:30:24
I know that someone else asked about this before (Lennart?), but I might
have to write a CardBus driver eventually, so I wanted to get some ideas
first.

The documentation for the CardBus chips that I have can handle PC Card
chips as well (you can either talk to the PC Card configuration registers
in PCI space, or it can decode the ISA configuration range and pretend
to be a 82365-compatible device).  Basically, you plug in your CardBus/
PC Card into the socket, and the controller automagically figures out
what kind of card it is.

I'm wondering if it make sense to create a seperate "cardbus" bus, or
just teach the PCMICA bus about a different type of cards with a
special "cardbus" bit set somewhere.  I think doing two different buses
(pcmcia and cardbus) might be weird, since they really are the same
hardware.  But perhaps at insert/probe time a card could be
automagically attached to the "correct" bus (cardbus or pcmcia), so
that might make sense.

Basically, CardBus doesn't look that hard, but I'm not sure how to
organize it all :-/

--Ken