Forums > General Discussion > Format old cisco PCMCIA flash card on ubuntu linux?
booger19a
14 posts
3 Mar 2010 at 7:28 p.m. UTC

hi, I've got a huge stack of about fifty 16MB PCMCIA flash cards I need to wipe before I dispose of the old cards. Has anybody ever done this on ubuntu before? I've got a laptop with a PCMCIA slot that sees the PCMCIA flash card when it is inserted. Gparted and fdisk don't see a disk for me to format though. Has anyone else out there ever done this before? My google skills have failed me. :(

thanks!
Sevan
23 posts
3 Mar 2010 at 7:52 p.m. UTC

as a starting point what does your kernel say about the flash cards? paste your dmesg output here
booger19a
14 posts
3 Mar 2010 at 9:42 p.m. UTC

Here is everything matching pcmcia from the dmesg.

dmesg | grep pcmcia
[   14.087284] yenta_cardbus 0000:03:01.0: pcmcia: parent PCI bridge Memory window: 0xdfc00000 - 0xdfcfffff
[   14.087288] yenta_cardbus 0000:03:01.0: pcmcia: parent PCI bridge Memory window: 0x80000000 - 0x83ffffff
[   14.471898] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x100-0x3af: clean.
[   14.473631] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x3e0-0x4ff: clean.
[   14.474329] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x820-0x8ff: clean.
[   14.474928] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xc00-0xcf7: clean.
[   14.475696] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xa00-0xaff: clean.
[  574.532204] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: pccard: PCMCIA card inserted into slot 0
[  574.532217] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: memory probe 0xdfc00000-0xdfcfffff: excluding 0xdfc00000-0xdfc0ffff 0xdfcf0000-0xdfcfffff
[  574.544635] pcmcia 0.0: pcmcia: registering new device pcmcia0.0

The last line shows I inserted a pcmcia flash card.

thanks
Sevan
23 posts
7 Mar 2010 at 12:19 a.m. UTC

post the whole dmesg instead of grepping for pcmcia
booger19a
14 posts
9 Mar 2010 at 4:47 p.m. UTC

Ok, no problem I'll attach it. I should mention that I'm running ubuntu 9.10.

File Attachments
Sevan
23 posts
9 Mar 2010 at 5:23 p.m. UTC

gahhh, my eyes!!!
that's offensive ;)
download this:
ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386/cd47.iso
burn it to CD
boot your system from it with the pcmcia card not installed
when prompted for install, upgrade, shell
choose shell
insert the card into the system
copy what ever is spat out to the terminal & paste it here, I'll give you the device name to use with dd or fdisk.

a useful dmesg output would look something like this
booger19a
14 posts
9 Mar 2010 at 8:28 p.m. UTC

hi Sevan, It says, "com3 at mcmcia0 function 0: can't allocate i/o space" when I insert the card.
Am out of luck?

thanks

File Attachments
Sevan
23 posts
9 Mar 2010 at 8:38 p.m. UTC

no, It could be a restriction of the ramdisk kernel which you're using to boot from the CD, only way to know would be to install OpenBSD & boot the GENERIC kernel, if you can boot from usb you could fit an install onto the 247MB usb disk you inserted easily, just skip the comp47.tgz & x* sets (no compiler & X11) Sorry if this is taking you around the houses.
booger19a
14 posts
9 Mar 2010 at 9:43 p.m. UTC

hmm, I was able to boot OpenBSD from the usb stick, but I still saw the same "com3 at mcmcia0 function 0: can't allocate i/o space" error when I put in the pcmcia card. I attached the output of dmesg from OpenBSD.

thanks

File Attachments
booger19a
14 posts
11 Mar 2010 at 3:36 p.m. UTC

I just ended up grabbing an old 3640 & formatted them that way. No problems doing it that way. :)
Sevan
23 posts
14 Mar 2010 at 2:50 p.m. UTC

sorry to have wasted your time, the cards where being detected as serial ports by the kernel?!?
booger19a
14 posts
14 Mar 2010 at 6:31 p.m. UTC

No worries, it was worth a try. Thanks for your help.
Sevan
23 posts
14 Mar 2010 at 11:21 p.m. UTC

no worries

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