On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 05:48:11PM -0500, Chris King wrote:
> I recently installed NetBSD 1.6.2 on an old Toshiba T1960CS laptop
> (486DX, 8MB RAM), and have been having some problems with PCMCIA. 
> I've tried three devices, and have had a different problem with each
> (all of which have been reported seperately before):
> 
> 1) Compact Flash memory card in PCMCIA/CF adaptor.
> 
> The kernel recognizes the device, but reports it as having random
> amounts of memory (e.g. 1142MB, when it really only has 64MB).  Any
> attempt to mount it causes a stream of "setmulti" errors, and
> terminates with a "device unconfigured" error.  The card works fine in
> a Sharp Zaurus.  The same problem was reported in
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2000/12/04/0005.html.
> 
> I attempted to rectify the problem by configuring atapibus on wdc, and
> sd on atapibus, under the belief that the card supported ATAPI, but
> the sd drivers would not recognize the card (even after disabling the
> wd drivers for the card).  Do CF memory cards not support ATAPI, or
> did I configure something wrong?  Is this even a solution?
> 
> 2) Linksys EtherFast ethernet card (ne).
> 
> The kernel recognizes the device, and it is able to send data (e.g.
> pings and DHCP requests), but upon receiving data (e.g. pongs and DHCP
> responses) I get errors reading "NIC memory corrupt - invalid packet
> length 48573" and such.  The same problem was reported in
> http://monkey.org/openbsd/archive/tech/9905/msg00011.html.
> 
> 3) NetGear MA701 802.11b card (wi) in PCMCIA/CF adaptor.
> 
> The kernel recognizes the device, but immediately drops into the
> debugger.  The IP is pointing to a "pushl" instruction, and any
> attempt to resume the kernel (using next) results in subsequent halts
> at "ret" and "iret" instructions, leading me to believe the stack was
> corrupt.  Hoping it was simply a stack overflow (though I guess that
> would be unlikely), I increased the parameter UPAGES in param.h from 2
> to 4, but the error still occured (at the same instruction, no less). 
> This leads me to believe either the stack pointer is being corrupted,
> or the stack is overflowing in a recursive function, but I could be
> very wrong (I'd check with a debug build, but it's hard to load a 17MB
> kernel in 8MB of RAM).  Similar problems have been reported (first
> three results
> for Google of wi netbsd kernel panic), but none where wi crashes
> immediately.
> 
> Any ideas as to what's causing these problems?  I can only assume
> they're all related, possibly (but hopefully not) to the laptop's lack
> of memory.  Are there easy workarounds?  Installing more memory isn't
> really an option, since the case is sealed tight and its external
> memory card format is quite hard to find.  The kernel (custom
> compiled, same problems happen with GENERIC though) is only 1.5MB, and
> there's usually over 1MB free after I log in.

I had 1.6.2 and 2.0beta on a laptop with nearly 4MB memory and I was
able to use a wi and a ne card simultaneusly - till something under the
pcmcia slot burnt.

So it is certainly possible to use a system with 8MB memory. I used
specially configured tiny kernel for my system and the 2.0 install
floppy would run out of memory but it worked.

HTH

Michal Suchanek