Why is PCMCIA driver software necessary?
In order for I/O drivers to detect and configure a PCMCIA card properly, PCMCIA driver software is needed. PCMCIA software is divided into two parts: Socket Services (SS) and Card Services (CS). 2. What is Socket Services? Socket Services, the lowest layer of PCMCIA software, is a standard software interface to the hardware that controls sockets for PCMCIA cards. It hides the hardware details that implement PCMCIA sockets on the system so that higher-level software can control and use PCMCIA cards without any information about the actual hardware interface. 3. What is Card Services? CS is a layer above SS, and manages PCMCIA card and system resources. Card Services takes requests from multiple processes known as clients. These clients can be device drivers, system utilities, or application programs. Card Services processes their requests and, if necessary, sends them to Socket Services. Clients can use Card Services to assign system resources, such as memory ranges, I/O ranges, and int
