Zaspath wrote on 2026-08-17, 19:05:

I'm having a lot of trouble with this, the Thinkpad R51 is supposed to have some DOS compatibility when it comes to PCMCIA, but […]
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I'm having a lot of trouble with this, the Thinkpad R51 is supposed to have some DOS compatibility when it comes to PCMCIA, but I cannot get it to see this Sony PCG-CF51A (or even power it) at DOS startup.

Currently using these (paths are examples)

DEVICEHIGH=\CARDBUS\IBMDSS14.SYS /D
DEVICEHIGH=\CARDBUS\IBMDOSCS.SYS /CARDBUS
DEVICEHIGH=\CARDBUS\DICRMU01.SYS /MA=C800-CFFF /SH=1
(This all appears to load fine)

DEVICEHIGH=\CARDBUS\$ICPMDOS.EXE
(may not even be needed? No errors, power management?)

DEVICEHIGH=\CARDBUS\AUTODRV.SYS \CARDBUS\AUTODRV.INI
(Output: Card services is not installed, IBM auto configurator was not installed)

DEVICEHIGH=\CARDBUS\PAWATA.SYS
(PCMCIA Storage Device(s) assigned to drive [D] [E] [F])

Then load the Sony device drivers:
VA16CLI.SYS
(ATA PC Card driver, Card not inserted or card information not found)
VA16CD.SYS
(Not found client driver)

The PCMCIA device never gets any power, so I'm missing something here! I am currently using JEMEX not EMM386, but have tried no end of parameters on that too.

Thanks.

Do you have EMM386 loading before those start loading? If so then you need to make sure to make an exception for the range that the card services will be using i.e. "EMM386.EXE X=C800-CFFF"

I've just tested this on my Thinkpad 600X which uses the same socket services - I never got these working in DOS before so it's handy 😀 Here's the config.sys that worked for me on a test floppy:

1DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS /testmem:off
2FILES=30
3BUFFERS=20
4
5DEVICE=IBMDSS14.SYS
6DEVICE=IBMDOSCS.SYS
7DEVICE=DICRMU01.SYS /MA=C800-CFFF
8
9DEVICE=VA16CLI.SYS
10DEVICE=VA16CD.SYS /D:PCGACD51
11LASTDRIVE=Z

So once the IBMDSS14.SYS (socket services) driver loads, then the card services and resource allocation, then the VA16CLI.SYS can load with no options set (it works out the port automatically as 180). That should then pick up and initialise the card and the CD driver can then be loaded, which then goes to autoexec.bat and loads MSCDEX.

You should try a stripped down setup to see if you can get just the card services and the PCGA-CD51 client driver loaded up. Specifically what I think is tripping you up is the PAWATA.SYS ATA card driver - the PCGA-CD51's card is called the NinjaATA and can load generic ATA drivers in Windows so it's probable that the PAWATA.SYS driver is picking up the CD drive's card before the proper driver gets to it.

Have you tried the other way around, see if ATA / compact flash cards work for you in DOS? To verify that the card services are working at least.

Thanks, got there in the end, the issue was the exclusion as you mentioned in JEMMEX/EMM386 and found UMBPCI.SYS doesn't play nicely, probably a memory region conflict.