Specifications

For "disk" type PC Cards (FlashDisks, CompactFlash, Hard Disk Adapters - basically anything that looks like
an ordinary IDE drive), an alternative solution is available: direct support within the Linux kernel. This has
the big advantage of minimal memory footprint, but of course it comes with a couple of disadvantages, too:
It works only with "disk" type PC Cards - no support for modems, network cards, etc; for these you
still need the PCMCIA Card Services package.
•
There is no support for "hot plug", i. e. you cannot insert or remove the card while Linux is running.
(Well, of course you can do this, but either you will not be able to access any card inserted, or when
you remove a card you will most likely crash the system. Don't do it - you have been warned!)
•
The code relies on initialization of the PCMCIA controller by the firmware (of course U-Boot will do
exactly what's required).
•
On the other hand these are no real restrictions for use in an Embedded System.
To enable the "direct IDE support" you have to select the following Linux kernel configuration options:
CONFIG_IDE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDISK=y
CONFIG_IDEDISK_MULTI_MODE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_MPC8xx_IDE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE_MODES=y
and, depending on which partition types and languages you want to support:
CONFIG_PARTITION_ADVANCED=y
CONFIG_MAC_PARTITION=y
CONFIG_MSDOS_PARTITION=y
CONFIG_NLS=y
CONFIG_NLS_DEFAULT="y"
CONFIG_NLS_ISO8859_1=y
CONFIG_NLS_ISO8859_15=y
With these options you will see messages like the following when you boot the Linux kernel:
...
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 50MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PCMCIA slot B: phys mem e0000000...ec000000 (size 0c000000)
Card ID: CF 128MB CH
Fixed Disk Card
IDE interface
[silicon] [unique] [single] [sleep] [standby] [idle] [low power]
hda: probing with STATUS(0x50) instead of ALTSTATUS(0x41)
hda: CF 128MB, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0xc7000320-0xc7000327,0xc3000106 on irq 13
hda: 250368 sectors (128 MB) w/16KiB Cache, CHS=978/8/32
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4
...
You can now access your PC Card "disk" like any normal IDE drive. If you start with a new drive, you have
to start by creating a new partition table. For Power Architecture® systems, there are two commonly used
options:
14.3.23.1. Using a MacOS Partition Table
A MacOS partition table is the "native" partition table format on Power Architecture® systems; most desktop
Power Architecture® systems use it, so you may prefer it when you have Power Architecture® development
14.3.23.1. Using a MacOS Partition Table 185