Hello,.

I have some doubts reagrding Role of PCMCIA.dll in communication to a
CF/PCMCIA card. Somebody please help me..

Let me explain the scenario. I have a Bluetooth CF card, which is a
Radio LAN adapter. When I insert it into my Pocket PC, it is emulated
to a COM port,which is bound to serail.dll.I am using this emulated
serial port to read/write data to the CF card.
My first doubt is...

What is the role of PCMCIA.dll here?.
Does the Sereal driver is using PCMCIA.dll to read/write data to the CF
card ?.

In WInce 5.0, I infer, in the PCMCIA we will be having 3 or 4 drivers.
The lowest one is socket driver, then card service driver. Then
PCMCIA.dll, which is for backward compatibility and the client driver
for the card. Normally Socket driver will be getting the event when new
card is plugged and it will intimate to the upper driver pcc_serv.dll,
then it will be loading the the appropriate client driver for the card.


Do this really mean that, the data communication to my CF card is like
SerialData ->PCMCIA -> Pcc_serv.dll -> socket driver => CF Card
Hardware?.

Is this same for Windows CE 3.0 ?. or how is it happening in WIndows CE
3.0 ?.


I have been spending a lot of time in internet to understand these
concepts.. still not able to get the correct answer. As such I will be
greatfull to you , for clearing my doubts.

Thanks & Regards
Siya Chin, Sheppe

PCMCIA.DLL provides the card services functionality used by a PCMCIA/CF card
driver in Windows CE V4.x and earlier. On V5.0 there is a new model for
developing PCCard drivers tat supports PCMCIA/CF/CardBus. However MS has
maintained PCMCIA.DLL for backward compatibility of existing drivers. For
the greatest reach of devices with your driver I'd stick to the use of
PCMCIA.DLL.

--
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com

"Do this really mean that, the data communication to my CF card is like
SerialData ->PCMCIA -> Pcc_serv.dll -> socket driver => CF Card
Hardware?."

To write data, you would be calling COM_Write in the serial data which would
be writing directly to the bluetooth card registers or writing during
interrupt when the FIFO has room.

Reading data would be a call to COM_Read in serial data which would be
reading from the serial driver's internal buffer that the interrupt unloads
into.

An interrupt would go to pcmcia.dll and then to the serial port driver's
interrupt function through the registered event. The data from the hardware
would be unloaded there, although some of the hardware's interrupt register
settings would be handled by pcmcia.dll.