PC Card not recognized - hardware or software issue?

Hello All,
this is my first post to this forum. I own a PowerBook G4 (late 2005) since February 2006, but still do consider myself being new to the world of Mac.
Most questions in this forum get good and detailed answers. That's why I hope someone here can help me with some issue regarding my PowerBooks PC Card slot. Thanks in advance for reading this.
I can't get some special PC Card to work. I'm not sure if it's an hardware or a software problem. For now, I guess it's an hardware issue with the PC Card slot. Regarding this, my Apple Service Provider told me, they will charge me a fee of 90 (Euro-)bucks, if their result of checking the PowerBook is, that the PC Card slot has no hardware damage and needs no repair. I'd like to have some more certainty before paying this for no reason.
Some facts:
* The PC Card is an Option GlobeTrotter HSPDA 7.2 READY DataCard
* This data card proved to work well in a linksys WRT54G3G router
* I installed a vendor specific driver/kernel extension/whatever that came with this card
* When the data card is inserted, it seems to get power from the pc card slot, since some lights on it start to flash
* At the same time a message occurs in system.log:
'Unable to create cardbus nub for socket 0'
* The card +does not+ appear in System Profiler
Provided that a pc card slot works correctly: Does system profiler at least displays an entry in section 'PC Cards', even if a certain card is not supported?
I'd like to ask you to tell me what you think. Please make a guess, if it's an hardware or a software issue, and let me know for what reason.
Thank you!

Hi eww,
thank you, any help/hint/idea is appreciated, cause I ran out of ideas myself.
I bought the card from a company called nova media: http://www.novamedia.de/epages/e_produkte_gt_hsdpamac.html. Novamedia develops drivers and connectivity software for those data cards by Option, and sell them bundeled with hardware. So I'm pretty sure this card basically works on PowerBooks. Their support answered several of my questions, and even developers got involved, but at the end they couldn't say for sure if it's their drivers or my PowerBooks fault. They never had this kind of error before.
Entry 'PCI Cards' in System Profiler shows 5 devices, no matter if the card is inserted or not:
Entry 1 ... is a network controller
Entry 2 ... Card: TXN,PCIXXXX-00, Type: cardbus, Bus: PCI, Slot: PC Card
Entry 3-5 ... USB20 devices
I had a look at the darwin source code (http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/tarballs/apsl/IOPCCardFamily-45.tar .gz) for the cardbus stuff and even found the log statement, but beyond that, got no clue from it. Unfortunately I'm neither a C programmer nor a device driver expert.
I guess, the best thing is to bring the PowerBook to my Apple Service Provider now. I'll leave a message here in 1 or 2 weeks what the results were. Currently I need my PowerBook very bad and can't do without it for several days.

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PC Card not recognized - hardware or software issue?

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