Introduction
ExpressCard is a high-performance replacement for the older Cardbus PC Card.
There are two standard formats: ExpressCard/34 (34mm x 75mm) and ExpressCard/54 (54mm x 75mm). The ExpressCard/54 slot is designed to accommodate the smaller ExpressCard/34 format.
A wide range of cards are available such as Firewire, USB, eSATA, and TV Tuners.
See Wikipedia and usb.org for more information.
Installation
The installation of a ExpressCard should be trivial.
Enable Hot Plugging
PCI Express Hotplug
The default kernel has support for the PCI Express Hotplug driver.
The kernel option CONFIG_HOTPLUG_PCI_PCIE should be set and you should have a module called pciehp in your system.
sudo modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1
ACPI PCI Hotplug
If the above pciehp driver does not work, try loading the ACPI PCI hotplug driver:
sudo modprobe acpiphp
Automatically load driver at startup
To load the above drivers at startup, edit /etc/modules file:
gksudo gedit /etc/modules
Add a new entry at the end of the file. e.g. acpiphp
Ubuntu 9.10 and onwards
Since Ubuntu 9.10 this option is compiled in so there is no such module. It is as if the module is always loaded.
To do the equivalent of this last command in Ubuntu 9.10 or 12.04, pass the pciehp.pciehp_force=1 to the kernel by editing /etc/default/grub file( See Grub2 ). Add it to the line
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
- so it appears as
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pciehp.pciehp_force=1"
Save and exit your text editor. Then run:
sudo update-grub
And reboot.