Description of problem:

On Acer Travelmate 230 one can find the following in 'dmesg':

Linux Kernel Card Services 3.1.22
  options:  [pci] [cardbus] [pm]
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 02:09.0. Please try using
pci=biosirq.
ds: no socket drivers loaded!

"pci=biosirq" does not help at all and 'ds' and 'yenta_socket' fail to load.
'modprobe' ends up, not very surprinsingly, with

init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including
invalid IO or IRQ parameters.

OTOH this laptop has a widely used OZ6912 Cardbus Controller, which is specifically
listed as supported in PCMCIA-HOWTO, and one can find a confirmation of that in
many places on the net.  Also current Knoppix kernel when  startd on the machine
in question at least loads 'yenta_socket' and 'ds' modules.  It is difficult to
say for
me how this works as at this moment I do not have any cards to check. :-)
Probably not at this moment as IRQ assigned is still 0.

This may something to do with the fact that this laptop supports, and apparently
assumes, ACPI for its various functions.  It can be seen in "e820 map":
..............
 BIOS-e820: 000000000f760000 - 000000000f76e000 (ACPI data)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000f76e000 - 000000000f780000 (ACPI NVS)
........
but ACPI is turned off in a kernel configuration.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
kernel-2.4.20-9 and kernel-pcmcia-cs-3.1.31-13

Additional info:

An output from 'lspci -tv'

-[00]-+-00.0  Intel Corp. 82845G/GL [Brookdale-G] Chipset Host Bridge
      +-02.0  Intel Corp. 82845G/GL [Brookdale-G] Chipset Integrated Graphics Device
      +-1d.0  Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #1)
      +-1d.1  Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #2)
      +-1d.2  Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #3)
      +-1d.7  Intel Corp. 82801DB USB EHCI Controller
      +-1e.0-[02]--+-05.0  Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+
      |            \-09.0  O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller
      +-1f.0  Intel Corp. 82801DB ISA Bridge (LPC)
      +-1f.1  Intel Corp. 82801DB ICH4 IDE
      +-1f.3  Intel Corp. 82801DB SMBus
      +-1f.5  Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Audio
      \-1f.6  Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Modem

and from 'lspci -s 2:9.0 -vv'

02:09.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller
	Subsystem: Unknown device 17c0:3102
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping-
SERR- FastB2B-
	Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=slow >TAbort- <TAbort-
<MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 0
	Region 0: Memory at 10001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
	Bus: primary=02, secondary=03, subordinate=06, sec-latency=32
	I/O window 0: 00000000-00000003
	I/O window 1: 00000000-00000003
	BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- ISA- VGA- MAbort- >Reset- 16bInt+ PostWrite-
	16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001

PCI id for the device "1217:6972".