Built-in SD card slot

[ACRizona]

Panasonic ToughBook CF-T1 has a built-in SD card slot.  Windows2000 does not show it as a USB device; it shows as a removable-disk 'MultimediaCard' with Ricoh driver.

The ToughBook boots ONLY from its harddisk.  There are no BIOS boot options.
I have Win2000 plus TinyCore booting via GRUB4DOS.

I carry camera photos, printer files, video, etc on SD cards which I need to use in TinyCore.

Can I get it to work with TinyCore ?    I have found very little info about built-in SD slots, beyond the eeePC thingeee.   One such topic mentioned the need for Linux 2.6.24???   Where do I start ?

[maro]

I've got not the slightest idea how those SD cards would show up, but you could install the 'pci-utils.tcz' extension and let us know the output of lspci. Furthermore please attach the output of dmesg (after inserting such an SD card).

Armed with that information someone here should be able to sort you out.

[jur]

All mine are showing up as /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 etc.

[maro]

Meanwhile I remembered that I've got a "new" 2nd-hand notebook (not yet in regular use) that features a SD card slot. So following my own advice I did:

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tc@box:~$ tce-load -wi pci-utils

tc@box:~$ lspci | grep SD
02:06.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)
02:06.3 SD Host controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller
After I inserted a SD card I found out that the system took note of that action and what it "saw" on it:

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tc@box:~$ dmesg | tail -4
tifm_core: MMC/SD card detected in socket 0:1
mmc1: new SD card at address 296f
mmcblk0: mmc1:296f SM02G 1.87 GiB
 mmcblk0: p1

tc@box:~$ fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 2014 MB, 2014838784 bytes
64 heads, 63 sectors/track, 976 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 = 2064384 bytes
        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/mmcblk0p1               1         976     1967489+  6 FAT16
So I used sudo rebuildfstab in an attempt to prepare for the mounting of the file system, checked the new entry in '/etc/fstab', mounted the filesystem and confirmed that I can "see" then content of it:

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tc@box:~$ grep mmc /etc/fstab
/dev/mmcblk0p1  /mnt/mmcblk0p1  vfat     noauto,users,exec,umask=000 0 0 # Added by TC

tc@box:~$ mount /mnt/mmcblk0p1

tc@box:~$ ls -l /mnt/mmcblk0p1
total 96
drwxrwxrwx    3 tc       staff        32768 Jan  1  2007 DCIM/
drwxrwxrwx    2 tc       staff        32768 Jan  1  2007 MISC/
-rwxrwxrwx    1 tc       staff          296 Aug 29  2008 WMPInfo.xml


[ACRizona]

lspci
01:05.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c475 SD Bus Host Adapter
01:05.1 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C575 SD Bus Host Adapter

dmesg   (nothing about SD or Ricoh)
 

[maro]

As I can't be sure that the 'Ricoh RL5c475' is really the responsible device for your SD card I'd suggest you provide the full output of lspci -v (which is a bit more verbose).

Furthermore it's not certain that 'SD' will be mentioned in the 'dmesg' output. A better way might be to take a snapshot of the output of dmesg and lsmod before and after the insertion of the SD card and look for changes (or attach all four files in an attachment here, for us to take a look).

It is possible that you need to add a module by hand, but more should be known when we have all the requested information.

[^thehatsrule^]

The sdricoh_cs module appears to be in base, which might be compatible.

If lsmod doesn't show it, maybe try the "laptop" boot option or manually load it (with modprobe).

[ACRizona]

As advised,  I piped lsmod and dmesg to .before and .after files.
file.before is booted with SD card removed.
file.after is booted with SD card inserted.
The .before & .after are identical.
-----------------------------------------------------------
I also added (modprobe) the file thehatsrule mentioned.  The lsmod.after2 file shows it loaded.
Nothing happened  I consider no sparks/fire/smoke as a good sign  

Where would I add the boot 'laptop'  ?     In the GRUB4DOS ?
Thanks for the help.
 

[maro]

I'll attempt to take a closer look at the 'dmesg' output, but it would be really good to have the lspci -v output to compare things.

Boot codes can be permanently included via the 'kernel ...' line in the 'menu.lst' configuration file of GRUB4DOS.

[tinypoodle]

According to dmesg output pcmcia modules already get loaded, so I doubt adding boot param 'laptop' would help in this case.

[maro]

ACRizona: With all the googling I've done now, plus searching through the TC 3.x kernel sources and based on all the evidence that you've provided I've come now to the conclusion that there is no Linux support for the 'Ricoh R5C575' to be found. The 'Ricoh RL5c475' is supported, but that acts as your PC Card (i.e. PCMCIA) controller.

That might not be the news you were hoping for, but I'm now pretty sure about the correctness of my statement. I had that impression all along, but did not want to say so until I had all the details from you. Given the fact that it's a bit an older system already I would not have much hope that this situation will change in the future.

[tinypoodle]

ACRizona: With all the googling I've done now, plus searching through the TC 3.x kernel sources and based on all the evidence that you've provided I've come now to the conclusion that there is no Linux support for the 'Ricoh R5C575' to be found. The 'Ricoh RL5c475' is supported, but that acts as your PC Card (i.e. PCMCIA) controller.

That might not be the news you were hoping for, but I'm now pretty sure about the correctness of my statement. I had that impression all along, but did not want to say so until I had all the details from you. Given the fact that it's a bit an older system already I would not have much hope that this situation will change in the future.

I concur...

However, a last hope might be in researching and potentially experimenting with following:
http://kernel.xc.net/search.cgi?string=ricoh&version=2.6.33&arch=x86

EDIT: Note that 2 items are flagged as "EXPERIMENTAL".

[ACRizona]

Oh well..... The SD works with the old OS.... I'll just stick with that.
Thanks for your help 

[tinypoodle]

You could consider getting an external (USB) SD - or even multicard - reader