Use PCMCIA as USB drive

[gabe]

I have an old Compaq Presario 1200-X111 notebook (500 MHz AMD CPU, 192 MB RAM) that only has one USB port which is occupied with my WiFi adapter. I'm running version 2.1 of Porteus-LXDE. I would like to use the PCMCIA slot as a USB drive so I can transfer files without having to remove the WiFi adapter. Currently, I have a 256 MB Compact Flash card installed thru an adapter.

In another post, it was determined that Porteus recognized the PCMCIA slot but it doesn't show up anywhere for me to format it or access it. Any suggestions on what I need to do?

[gabe]

I think I solved my own problem. I selected Debian in PPM and found a pcmciautils package base consisting of four packages. It looked like two 2-package sets so I downloaded the two "18" packages and activated them. I didn't see any difference. I left those in and then downloaded and activated the two "15" packages. My compact flash card showed up in GParted as /dev/sb1. It was set up as a linux swap device. Since I would be transferring files to a Windows PC I reformatted it to Fat32. I tested it by copying a file to it and then reading it back on my Windows PC.

I went back and removed the two "18" packages, rebooted and the system still recognizes the compact flash card so they were obviously not needed.

[Solved]

[fanthom]

Porteus is based on slackware so you should use slackware packages in first place.

btw - i will add pcmciautils package to core for next release so pcmcia flash cards will work out of the box.
thanks for reporting.

[gabe]

Do you recommend that I remove the Debian packages and install the slackware ones?