Hi,
I am trying to get some old Linear Flash PCMCIA cards to work. I have a couple older laptops with card slots that happily run Tumbleweed. For certain cards, it properly detects them and spins up MTD device files and things work properly. In talking with some folks it appears the issue is the pcmcia and pcmciamtd kernel drivers are built so that “unknown” cards ( which is most of these linear flash devices that lack proper CIS data ) are ignored. However there are options to force unknown cards ( almost exclusively these old flash cards ) to be handled by the drivers. The goal is getting data off the LF cards, so if there is an easier way… or an incantation… I’m interested in that to.
I’ve found some 10+ YO articles on building suse kernels, but am looking for something more recent, and also perhaps something where I can build just the 2 or 3 KO’s I need. That way I’m not risking breaking too much, as these modules are dynamically loaded so a reboot “fixes” things if I mess up.
Thanks!
– Bob
Specifically I think I need to set
CONFIG_MTD_PCMCIA_ANONYMOUS is not set
to “y” in the kernel config, but is there a way to just rebuild the pcmcia / pcmciamtd modules, or do I need to rebuild the whole kernel? And if so, what is the proper process to flip a config setting in the config and … eventually … be running that new kernel?
– Bob
@Bob-O-Rama Hi 
So your sure you can’t just set a module parm option for either pcmciamtd or pcmcia?
From the kernel source, you should be able to just build the modules with the support after tweaking the Makefile.
Can’t just install an old distro that has all the support required to get the data off these cards?
Sadly the setting is not exposed as a runtime parameter. I’ve cobbled together a scripted process to make a kernel build environment and do it, a few false starts along the way, but its been building for a few hours. I was thinking OBS, but I want to see if this even works at all to fix the issue. I can’t find a recipe for building just the pcmcia components, which would make it less of a time waster. Most of the folk remedies in the forums go back like 10+ years and don’t work.
@Bob-O-Rama you should be able to just cd to the pcimcia directory and make modules
