I am able to install the PCMCIA card but it is giving conflict in a major way.

a fresh installed mandrake 8.1 indeed will set /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia to:
PCMCIA=yes
PCIC=i82365

That is what i had too. But now i have a conflict with my IDE because.
as soon as i start pcmcia ( via /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia start ) it goes
into conflict with the irq for my harddisk ( see /proc/interrupts in my first mail ).

cardctl status will give me the status that the pcmcia card installed.
But the laptop gets froozen. I can only try this in mantainance mode.

On normal boot-up, the loading of PCMCIA just freezes. I constanly
hear the harddisk clicking away. I am sure there is an IDE HDA - PCMCIA conflict.

That is why my initial question was, can i force the PCMCIA device to take another irq
then irq 13. I have tried different ways. Via excluding all the irq's in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts.

forcing it via irq_list, pci_irq_list, do_scan=0, ...

Nothing is helping. As i understand you correctly, it can not be forced?
Is this true??.