If an installation is done from a local CD, the resulting machine doesn't have its PCMCIA stuff set up at all. Most notably, the user is responsible for using /sbin/probe -m
It seems like the install process was unable to find a pcmcia controller chipset properly and did not set up /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia correctly. One thing you could do is after running the probe, using the information gathered and write the /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia file by hand. The format is as follows: PCMCIA=yes PCIC= PCIC_OPTS= CORE_OPTS= PCIC= can be set to either i82365 or TCIC depending on what probe says. the OPTS line can be left blank. When ever the machine is booted and /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia start is ran it will read the config info from the above file.