I have a PCMCIA network card, a 3Com 100/10 BASE-TX Fast Ethernet (model 3c575) in my Laptop (A Dell Inspiron 5000e) The PCMCIA card worked during installation but it fails to be detected after reboot. I tried insmodding the correct module but the device couldn't be detected. The problem may be that the network card driver was recently moved to another module (I think it was the 3c59x module). I have a friend that has the same computer and the same network card and it works fine under his own-compiled kernel.
What kernel version is your friend using? We both have Dell Inspirons. You could try 2.4.0-test13pre3-ac3: there's a work-around for some Dell Inspiron 5000e bug I think. (It didn't work for my system though, so perhaps it's something else.)
Here's also the output when running cardctl ident [root@braxen /root]# cardctl ident Socket 0: no product info available Socket 1: product info: "3Com Corporation", "3CCFE575CT", "LAN Cardbus Card", "004" manfid: 0x0101, 0x5257 function: 6 (network)
This defect is considered MUST-FIX for Florence Gold release
*** Bug 23820 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
What pcmcia-cs package are you using ?
Found + fixed the bug. The fix should appear in rawhide soon. (probably as 0.99.18 or later)
This is believed to be fixed in current Rawhide kernels. If these kernels does not fix the problem for you, please reopen this bug.