Linux Kernel 2.6 PCMCIA - changes to drivers

This page details changes in 2.6 which affect PCMCIA card drivers. Changes marked with [*] have been propagated to all PCMCIA card drivers in Linus' kernel tree.

event handler initialization in struct pcmcia_driver (2.6.13) [*]

The event handler is notified of all events, and must be initialized as the event() callback in the driver's struct pcmcia_driver.

pcmcia/version.h should not be used (2.6.13) [*]

This file will be removed eventually.

in-kernel matching of devices and drivers (2.6.13) [*]

PCMCIA devices and their correct drivers can now be matched in kernelspace. See the file Documentation/devicetable.txt in the kernel sources for details.

device model integration (2.6.11) [*]

A struct pcmcia_device is registered with the device model core, and can be used (e.g. for SET_NETDEV_DEV) by using handle_to_dev(client_handle_t * handle).

convert internal I/O port addresses to unsigned long (2.6.11) [*]

ioaddr_t should be replaced by kio_addr_t in PCMCIA card drivers.

irq_mask and irq_list parameters (2.6.11) [*]

The irq_mask and irq_list parameters should no longer be used in PCMCIA card drivers. Instead, it is the job of the PCMCIA core to determine which IRQ should be used. Therefore, link->irq.IRQInfo2 is ignored.

client->PendingEvents and client->Attributes is gone

client->PendingEvents and client->Attributes are no longer available.

core functions no longer available

The following functions have been removed from the kernel source because they are unused by all in-kernel drivers, and no external driver was reported to rely on them:

pcmcia_get_first_region
pcmcia_get_next_region
pcmcia_modify_window
pcmcia_set_event_mask
pcmcia_get_first_window
pcmcia_get_next_window

device list iteration upon module removal (2.6.10)

It is no longer necessary to iterate on the driver's internal client list and call the ->detach() function upon module removal.

resource management update (2.6.8)

Although the PCMCIA subsystem will allocate resources for cards, it no longer marks these resources busy. This means that driver authors are now responsible for claiming your resources as per other drivers in Linux. You should use request_region() to mark your IO regions in-use, and request_mem_region() to mark your memory regions in-use. The name argument should be a pointer to your driver name. Eg, for pcnet_cs, name should point to the string "pcnet_cs".