Solaris 2.x PC Card FAQ
<Basis Systeme netzwerk/Munich>
Solaris 2.x PC Card FAQ
PCMCIA stands for Personal Computer Memory Card International Association. It was founded in 1989 to develop and promote a world-wide card standard from among the 40 or so emerging card formats available at the time.
Although the early versions of the standard were called PCMCIA, the current standard (since CeBit '95) is called the "PC Card Standard" and the cards themselves are called "PC Cards" to distinguish between the subject and the association.
These cards provide a vast variety of hardware devices which are rugged, credit-card sized, lightweight, power efficient and "easy to use". Hundreds of vendors are active in the competitive PC Card marketplace and returns to scale have produced a wide range of low cost, quality, devices. Although primarily designed for portable applicances such as notebooks their utility and platform independent standardization has also made them attractive for desktops.
PC Card slots are provided on the SPARCStation Voyager and Tadpole SPARCBook 3s and is optionally possible with Sun Desktop, RDI's Powerlite notebook and BriteLite Laptop SPARCStations.
This FAQ is focused upon the RDI and Sun Solutions using Solaris 2.x. The Tadpole SPARCBook , by contrast, provides its own collection of drivers and has its own interface as part of its NCE 2.0 ( Nomadic Computing Environment) for SunOS 4.1x and Solaris 2.x.
The PC Card Standard defines a 68-pin interface between the peripheral
card and the socket into which it gets inserted. It defines three standard
PC Card form factors, called Type I, Type II and Type III. All PC Cards measure
the same length and width, differing only in thickness. Smaller cards can
fit in larger sockets.
In addition to electrical and physical specifications, the PC Card Standard
defines a software architecture to provide "plug and play" capability across
the widest range of products. This software is made up of
Socket Services
and Card Services. It is Card and Socket Services that
allow for interoperability
of PC Cards.
| PC Card Physical Characteristics | ||
|---|---|---|
| Physical Interface | 68 Pins | |
| Back End I/O Conn. | Proprietary1) | |
| Length | 85.6 mm | |
| Width | 54.0 mm | |
| Thickness | Type I | 3.3 mm |
| Type II | 5.0 mm | |
| Type III | 10.5 mm | |
| Operating Temp. | 0 to 55 C | |
| Storage Temp. | -20 to 65 C | |
| Minimum Insertions | Office Env. | 10,000 |
| Harsh Env. | 5,000 | |
1) Two standardized connectors are available as part of the optional PCMCIA Specific Extensions Specifications.
| Pin Assignments For The PC Card And Cardbus Interfaces | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pin | 16-Bit | 32-bit
Card Bus | Pin | 16-Bit | 32-bit
Card Bus | ||
| Memory | I/O+Mem | Memory | I/O+Mem | ||||
| 1 | GND | GND | GND | 35 | GND | GND | GND |
| 2 | D3 | D3 | CAD0 | 36 | CD1# | CD1# | CCD1# |
| 3 | D4 | D4 | CAD1 | 37 | D11 | D11 | CAD2 |
| 4 | D5 | D5 | CAD3 | 38 | D12 | D12 | CAD4 |
| 5 | D6 | D6 | CAD5 | 39 | D13 | D13 | CAD6 |
| 6 | D7 | D7 | CAD7 | 40 | D14 | D14 | RSRVD |
| 7 | CE1# | CE1# | CCBE0# | 41 | D15 | D15 | CAD8 |
| 8 | A10 | A10 | CAD9 | 42 | CE2# | CE2# | CAD10 |
| 9 | OE# | OE# | CAD11 | 43 | VS1# | VS1# | CVS1 |
| 10 | A11 | A11 | CAD12 | 44 | RSRVD | IORD# | CAD13 |
| 11 | A9 | A9 | CAD14 | 45 | RSRVD | IOWR# | CAD15 |
| 12 | A8 | A8 | CCBE1# | 46 | A17 | A17 | CAD16 |
| 13 | A13 | A13 | CPAR | 47 | A18 | A18 | RSRVD |
| 14 | A14 | A14 | CPERR# | 48 | A19 | A19 | CBLOCK# |
| 15 | WE# | WE# | CGNT# | 49 | A20 | A20 | CSTOP# |
| 16 | READY | IREQ# | CINT# | 50 | A21 | A21 | CDEVSEL# |
| 17 | Vcc | Vcc | Vcc | 51 | Vcc | Vcc | Vcc |
| 18 | Vpp1 | Vpp1 | Vpp1 | 52 | Vpp2 | Vpp2 | Vpp2 |
| 19 | A16 | A16 | CCLK | 53 | A22 | A22 | CTRDY# |
| 20 | A15 | A15 | CIRDY# | 54 | A23 | A23 | CFRAME# |
| 21 | A12 | A12 | CCBE2# | 55 | A24 | A24 | CAD17 |
| 22 | A7 | A7 | CAD18 | 56 | A25 | A25 | CAD18 |
| 23 | A6 | A6 | CAD20 | 57 | VS2# | VS2# | CVS2 |
| 24 | A5 | A5 | CAD21 | 58 | RESET | RESET | CRST# |
| 25 | A4 | A4 | CAD22 | 59 | WAIT# | WAIT# | CSERR# |
| 26 | A3 | A3 | CAD23 | 60 | RSRVD | INPACK# | CREQ# |
| 27 | A2 | A2 | CAD24 | 61 | REG# | REG# | CCBE3# |
| 28 | A1 | A1 | CAD25 | 62 | BVD2 | SPKR# | CAUDIO |
| 29 | A0 | A0 | CAD26 | 63 | BVD1 | STSCHG# | CSTSCHG |
| 30 | D0 | D0 | CAD27 | 64 | D8 | D8 | CAD28 |
| 31 | D1 | D1 | CAD29 | 65 | D9 | D9 | CAD30 |
| 32 | D2 | D2 | RSRVD | 66 | D10 | D10 | CAD31 |
| 33 | WP | IOIS16# | CCLKRUN# | 67 | CD2# | CD2# | CCD2# |
| 34 | GND | GND | GND | 68 | GND | GND | GND |
| Sun PCMCIA Interface Electrical | |
|---|---|
| DC Signal Levels | +5 Volt TTL/CMOS |
| Vcc supplied | +5 Volt; power can be switched on/off to support live insertion and removal of PC Cards |
| VPP1 | +5 Volt, +12 Volt, High Impedance -software selectable; power can be switched on/off to support live insertion and removal of PC Cards |
Card Services describes an API (Application Programming Interface)
which allows PC Cards and sockets to be shared by multiple clients. Clients
are the programs that access Card Servicse and may be devices drivers,
configuration utilities or application programs. This specification is intended
to be independent of the hardware that actually manipulates PC Cards and
sockets.
Card Services has two goals. First to support the ability of PC Card-aware
devices drivers, configuration utilities and application programs to share
PC Cards, sockets and system resources. Second is to provide a centralized
resource for the common functionality required by these clients.
Card Services is structured in a client/server model. Application programs,
device drivers and utility programs are the clients requesting services.
Card Services is the server providing the services requested by clients.
the Card Services interface defines how the clients and servers
communicate.
See also: PC Card
Standard
Volume 5, Card Services
.
Socket Services is the lowest layer in a multi-layer architecture
that manages resources on PC Cards. Socket Services provides a universal
software interface to the hardware that controls sockets for PC Cards. It
masks the details of the hardware used to implement these sockets, allowing
higher-level software to be developed which is able to control and utilize
PC Cards without any knowledge of the actual hardware interface. Software
layers above Socket Services provide additional capabilities. Immediately
above Socket Services is Card Services.
Socket Services approaches the handling it manages by addressing it as a
number of objects with different areas of functionality. Adapters are the
hardware that connects a host system's bus to PC Card sockets. Sockets are
receptacles for PC Cards. Host systems may have more than one adapter, and
each adapter may have one or more sockets.
Socket Services reports the number of sockets, windows and EDC generators
provided by each adapter installed. Adapter power consumption and stats change
reporting may be controlled separately for each adapter. Socket Services
describes the characteristics of each socket and allows socket resources
to be manipulated and current settings determined.
See also: PC Card
Standard
Volume 6 Socket Services.
PC Card slots are provided on the SPARCStation Voyager and Tadpole SPARCBook 3s. The RDI Powerlite SPARC notebooks offer PC Card slots as an option&emdash;. instead of the internal 3 1/2" floppy drive or in the Peripheral Expansion Unit.
To use
PC Cards (PCMCIA) with a Desktop SPARCStation&emdash; or RDI BriteLite
Laptop or Powerlite PXU&emdash; one needs a free
SBus
slot and a Nell Card (SBus adapter
card from Sun). This card provides 2xType I or Type II or 1xTypeIII for modems,
storage
cards, network options conpatible with the Intel PC Card chip set. See
Nell
Card Description and Specification.
The PCMCIA Interface utilizes the STP4020QFP PCMCIA/SBus interface chip to bridge the two bus standards. The STP 4020QFP contains a fully-compliant IEEE P1496 SBus slave interface. It supplies a direct interface to the PCMCIA standard for Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 devices.
The Tadpole SPARCBook provides its own collection of drivers and has its own interface. The Voyager, RDI and SBus products uses the Card and Socket services that are provided by Solaris 2.x in the Vendor supplement CD or Voyager cluster on the SMCC supplement CD.
Drivers are developed with the Solaris PCMCIA Card Services API (77k gzip'd Postscript), enabling all devices to be supported on every Solaris system&emdash; source compatability.
At current PC Card support within Solaris (2.5) is primarily restricted to memory and modem cards. SunSoft has announced that more drivers will be available to support other kinds of PC Card devices in the future.
Software to develop PC Card drivers is part of the Solaris 2.5 Driver Development Toolkit available from SMCC/SunSoft.
| Type | Function | Driver |
|---|---|---|
| SERIAL:* | Serial/Modem Cards | pcser |
| MEMORY:SRAM | Memory Cards | pcmem |
| MEMORY:ATA | ATA Cards (eg. SunDisk) | pcata1) |
| LAN/3COM | 3Com Ethernet Adapter Card | pclx (Not Available) |
| LAN:Wireless/WAVELAN | WaveLAN Wireless Ethernet Adapter | wavelan2) |
| MISC:FLOPPY | Accurite TravelFloppy | pcmfd2) |
| MEMORY:SWAP | Experimental DRAM Swap driver | pcswap3) |
1)Sun Internal Development
2)3rd party drivers
3)Experimental Driver (not yet released)
to use DRAM cards for virtual memory (SWAP).
Solaris 2.5 (or earlier) uses the card Metaformat, or CIS (Card Information
Structure)
to identify the card. The correlation (mapping) between CIS and driver is
specified
in the /etc/driver_aliases file by:
The following cards are confirmed to work with SPARC Solaris 2.5:
PC modem Cards officially supported by Solaris 2.x:
PC modem cards (pcser) tested by and available from BSn:
The Following Serial PC Cards (pcser) have been tested by Sun and are said to work correctly:
The following (additional) cards have been tested by BSn and confirmed to work.
| PC Card Type | Type I (SRAM) | Type II (SunDisk®/ATA) |
|---|---|---|
| Variants Available | 5v and 3v | 12v and 5v |
| Typ. card size | 512K, 1/2/4 MB | 1.8/5/10/20/40MB |
| current max. card size | 4MB | 40 MB |
| backup battery | mandatory | not applicable |
| retention minus power | seconds | unlimited (projected > 1M years) |
| minimum write voltage | 3 to 5 volts | must have ~12 volts |
| power consumption (writing) | not a factor | 275 mW or more. |
| power comsumption (reading) | same as writes | same as SRAM |
| power comsumption (idle) | same as writes | marginal (typ. <10mW) |
| write access | 200ns | 9us1 |
| erase speed | not applicable | 1.6 s/zone 2 |
| I/O Throughput (UFS) | XX Kbps | XX Kbps |
| cycling limits | no known limit | >100,000 (will eventually fail) |
| 1:) | 40 times slower than SRAM | 2:) | ~1e6 times slower than SRAM |
The PC Card ATA Standard describes the operation of mass storage PC Cards using the protocol of the ANSI AT Attachment (ATA) Interface for Disk Drives in the PC Card environment. This standard includes both the usage of the ANSI ATA-defined protocols and the differences required due to conflicts between the PC Card and ANSI ATA Standards.
Intel cards are generally Type I, while SunDisk cards are generally Type II. Epson, Seagate, ACE Technologies, and several other companies make or license the SunDisk flash memory cards technology.
An Apple Newton® Flash card will not work in the Voyager. It is an Intel flash card. The Newton MessagePad only has Intel flash memory drivers.
Many handhelds such as the HP 100LX only have drivers for SunDisk so their cards will work.
SunDisk and ATA HardDisks have the same interface. The difference is
ATA HardDisks are available (branded) from dozens of companies, the primary vendors are: Calluna Technologies, Integral and Maxtor. Disks with capacities of slightly under 1 GB are already starting to appear. They are generally Type-III but Type-II formats are also available. These are available in 5v or 12v (or both) and sizes of 500 MB or larger have already been announced.
| Mode | +5VDC 5% / +12VDC 5% |
|---|---|
| Spin-up | 640mA (5v) |
| R/W | 335mA (5v) |
| Idle Latched | 130mA (5v) |
| Standby | 14mA (5v) |
| Sleep | 7mA (5v) |
| Power Dissapation | max. 1.7&endash;2.3 watts (~3.2&endash;4.5 watts spin-up) |
To prevent heat buildup in the PC Card slots one should keep the total dissapation of all PC Cards to under 3 watts. Despite the availability of 2 type-II slots the use of 2xATA HardDisks or the concurrent use of both PC ATA (or flash) and modem cards&emdash; modem PC Cards typically draw 1 watt or more when online (eg. MT 2834LT dissapates 1.25 watts)&emdash; for long periods of time is not advised. Doing so may cause this area of your system to overheat.
Although SRAM cards are small, robust and fast their max. capacity of 4 MB limits their use. SunDisk cards, on the other hand, are available in 80 MB formats but are still quite costly. Given the low cost availability of PC Card HDDs with capacities of several hundred MB, they represent a very interesting medium for the exchange of data between desktop and portables.
PCMCIA has specified in Volume 7, Media Storage Formats a set of standards for formatting data on PC Cards used as storage devices, primarily Flash storage devices, to promote the exchange of these cards among different host systems. The included formats are:
The bundled drivers in Solaris 2.x supports, in addition to the MS-DOS format, the use of UFS (Unix File System) on PC Memory cards. UFS formated Memory Cards are not defined in the standard and are not interchangable between SPARC Solaris and Solaris x86. To exchange memory cards between the Voyager and Intel PC platforms (including Solaris x86) one should use a MS-DOS psuedo-formated file system.
The Following SRAM PC Memory Cards have been tested by Sun and are said to work correctly:
Additional, the the following SRAM PC Memory Cards have been tested by BSn and confirmed to work correctly:
The following cards are currently being tested:
pcmcia, instance #0
pcser, instance #0
PC,Intel MODEM 2400+ iNC110US A-0 (driver not attached)
Notice the line PC,Intel MODEM 2400+ iNC110US A-0 (driver not attached)
A collection of PC Card Modem CIS Strings (similar to format.dat)
is available from:
http://www.bsn.com/Support/PCMCIA/modem.cis
and a tool to read this file and add new entries into the
/etc/driver_aliases file is downloadable from
http://www.bsn.com/PCMCIA/addmodem.
If you have an entry for a serial device not in the list: please send
it to
Edward C. Zimmermann <edz@bsn.com>
for
inclusion in this list.
Basis Systeme netzwerk/Munich is distributing this FAQ and acting as a self-appointed clearinghouse for SPARC PC Card related information as a service to the Internet community. Although this FAQ is not sactioned by SMCC it is the authors hope that Sun Microsystem or its employees will help this project and contribute information, hints and tips.