7.2 PCMCIA Network Interface Card Support in Windows NT

This describes how to set up a PCMCIA network interface card in Windows NT platforms. This covers only PCMCIA NIC cards, and does not discuss how other PCMCIA devices (modems and SCSI controllers, for example) are configured or installed.

The pcmcia.sys DLL provides the supports services for PCMCIA devices in Windows NT. It configures the PCMCIA slots based on information it gathers from the registry. This information consists of the following:

• IO Ports

• Interrupts

• Shared Memory Windows

• Attribute Memory Windows

When Windows NT boots, pcmcia.sys communicates with each PCMCIA slot and determines whether the PCMCIA device is a network adapter. Based on this information, pcmcia.sys uses the tuple on the PCMCIA card (Manufacturer Id String, Device ID String, and CRC values) to locate card information in the registry. Each supported card must have an entry in the PCMCIA section of the registry. The layout of this section of the registry can be in either of the following two forms:

Format 1:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
\Pcmcia\DataBase

    Manufacturer_Id_String

        Device_Id_String

            Driver: REG_SZ: DriverName    // without the .sys extension

            <Optional Parameters, if any>

For example:

    3Com Corporation

        3C589

            Driver: REG_SZ: elnk3 // without the .sys extension

Format 2:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
\Pcmcia\DataBase

    Manufacturer_Id_String

        Device_Id_String

            CRC

                Driver: REG_SZ: DriverName

                <Optional Parameters, if any

For example:

    Xircom

        Credit Card 10-Base-T

            1234

                Driver: REG_SZ: xcsiips

                AttributeMemorySize: REG_DWORD: 0x1000