I’ve got a Lenovo x60s laptop, which has a built in Ricoh SD card reader. The card reader works fine under XP (and not so fine under Vista, but that’s another story) but hasn’t been automatically detected by my Ubuntu installs.
Here’s how to get it working, so that it will auto mount any SD card inserted into the slot.
It’s actually quite a simple process. You’ll need to edit one file, adding one short line. The next time you restart your machine, the SD card reader will be functional.
First, we’ll go into the command line (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal) and make a backup copy of the file we’re going to modify, which is the modules file in the /etc directory.
sudo cp /etc/modules /etc/modules.bak
Now we’re going to edit the file and add one line.
gksu gedit /etc/modules
Tag this on to the end of the file in a new line:
tifm_sd
When you restart, you’re card reader will be functional. You’ll see that when you slap an SD card into the reader, it will automount.
But wait, don’t want to have to restart your machine? Go back to the terminal you impatient person and type:
sudo modprobe tifm_sd
That should do the trick.
Technorati Tags: sd, sd card, ubuntu, ricoh, slapa card
May 1st, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Hi AG,
I wish the built-in card reader on this Toshiba Satellite Pro M10 were as acquiescent as your Ricoh. Been scouring the ‘net for solutions, none have worked so far.
Bambit
May 1st, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Hey Bambit,
Who makes it? If you do an ‘lspci’ you should see it in there somewhere (probably near the bottom).
AG
August 12th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
I have a dell inspiron 6400 chipset intel, my lspci says:
03:01.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
03:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)
But It doesn’t work with a mmc card, I haven’t try with a sd because I don’t have any.
September 16th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
where do
September 16th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
where do I find this file to modify
January 5th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
have you tried it with memory stick? the sd is running ok, but MS does not…
January 13th, 2009 at 8:07 am
I’m using Ubuntu 8.10 - Intrepid Ibex.
Worked like a charm on my Dell Vostro 1400.
Thanks a lot.
Cheers from Brazil!
May 7th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Thank you so much! The card reader was the only thing that didn’t work on my dell vostro. Works now!
July 5th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Worked in a heartbeat in my Vostro 1500 with jaunty. Thanks!
November 5th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Just grabbed the feed… thanks for posting this.
January 27th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
I’ve never had problems using it in Vista. What types of problems are you running into?