Dead PCMCIA Slots, or misconfiguration?

[dubG]

I have a dell inspiron 8200 and no other operating system but gentoo is on it to test this, but...

I believe I have the kernel set up correctly (as per PCMCIA howto), pcmcia_cs is emerged and seems to be working properly.

lspci returns the following information about my controllers:

02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4451 PC card Cardbus Controller
02:01.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4451 PC card Cardbus Controller

PCMCIA is started, and cardmgr is loaded, and tells me it is watching two sockets.

Upon insertion of my pc-card, nothing happens. absolutely nada. no power on light on the pc card, no beeps, no messages, etc. I tried this pc-card (Proxim Orinoco Wireless Gold B) in another machine and it loaded fine, so I know that the card itself is working. This happens no matter which slot (I have two) I insert it into...

cardctl status
returns ->
Socket 0:
no card
Socket 1:
no card

Does anyone have any clue? I am starting to think I am dealing with two dead PCMCIA slots, is that likely? I've had these pcmcia slots working before, and if they're dead, they both died at the same time... I'm not sure how I can test whether or not it is my configuration or if the slots are in fact dead. The fact that they're being recognized by lspci and pcmcia can start and cardmgr loads fine leads me to believe that the pcmcia controllers are working properly... but then I can't explain why it won't recognize that cards are inserted...

Any feedback greatly appreciated.

[brodo]

Can you compare /proc/interrupts of a working and a non-working configuration? Which kernel version are you using? Because of these interrupt problems, please test the latest 2.6.7-rc1 kernel.

[jewps]

you'd need hotplug and the modules for your pcmcia cards before it seems to detect anything. that's how it is for me.