PC-Card

This article describes the setup of PC-Card (also known as PCMCIA) controllers.

Kernel Configuration
The following kernel options must be activated for PCMCIA controllers:

Portage Configuration
Portage knows the global USE flag  for enabling support for PC-Cards in other packages. Enabling this USE flag will pull in automatically:

After setting the USE flag in the step above be sure to update the system so the changes take effect:

To install pcmciautils manually (if it is not already pulled in):

Card Information Structure
A PC-Card has a firmware called Card Information Structure (CIS). Some CISs are flawed, but can be patched at boot time. For those types of cards install :

Resource database
Some old 16-bit PCMCIA cards works only if a resource database is set up. This effects only some x86 and x86_64 computers; not all are effected. To find out if the database is needed look at the controllers PCI-ID. The lspci tool works nicely for this task:

If the first two numbers are not zeros (here in bold: 03), then no resource database is needed. If they are zeros, then the database will need copied to :

Edit the file as needed.

Usage
The pccardctl command (part of the package) can be used to show information about the PC-Card controller and the inserted cards. It can also be used to load and unload PC cards.