3Com 3C389 manual Super Client Drivers, Card Services Enabler

Super Client Drivers 1-7

Super Client Drivers

Many notebook PC vendors are providing customers with super client drivers that can enable many different PC Cards. PC-DOS 6.1 includes one called PCMSCD.EXE, for example.

They are best used for modems and other PC Cards that do not have a Card Services client driver of their own. If you use a super client driver, try to disable support for the PC Card and use the 3Com client driver. 3Com drivers have been written to take advantage of Card Services. Look at the documentation for your super client driver to find out whether you can disable token ring support.

Card Services Enabler

If you want to use a token ring device driver that does not have built-in Card Services support on a system that uses Card Services, CS20TOK.EXE is supplied. This program is a Card Services Enabler that uses Card and Socket Services to configure the 3C389 PC Card. As with other enablers, you must specify the resources desired for the PC Card, and they must agree with the settings of the token ring device driver for the system to work correctly.

Card and Socket Services Versus Point Enablers

In principle, Card and Socket Services is the better method of connection because it allows you to insert or remove PC Cards from any slot as you want, even while the PC is switched on (hot-swapping) and it automatically allocates resources like memory, I/O ports, interrupt levels, and slots.

Point Enablers, two of which are provided with the PC Card, are popular because they remove themselves from memory after having been loaded—as opposed to the 30-40 KB needed for Card and Socket Services.