Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 17:05:35 -0500 (CDT) From: Joseph Wyatt <wyattj@Mcs.Net> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Compatability Questions Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95.990714163900.13378A-100000@Venus.mcs.net>
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To whom it may concern. I have been running Linux since the early 90's, and am thinking of trying FreeBSD. Linux development with regard to PNP on newer machines is slow. I was wondering how far the devlopment for PNP is in FreeBSD. When I speak of PNP, I do not mean older ISA cards which were PNP/Legacy switchable. I mean the newer PCI PNP card with no jumpers, or for that matter no software or firmware settings. These types of cards are programmed by the OS. For instance, I just built a 450mhz Pentium system with PNP Scsi, Modem, and Ethernet cards. The Mother board has other PNP devices such as IDE Disk Controller, Video, Sound and USB ports. According to the BIOS settings Most of these with the exception of the IDE Disk Controller are set to IRQ 11. Windows '98 allows IRQ 11 to be shared with the devices and uses memory addresses to differentiate them. Example, the Scsi card is at 0xd800, while the Modem is at 0xda00, and still the Ethernet card is at 0xdc00. They all share the same IRQ 11, and they all work. The common denominator seems to be the USB controller. Windows '98 reports that this device does something I'm not familiar with, nor have I ever heard of in the 20+ years I've been in the computer field, and that is IRQ Steering. I assume that it allows for the sharing of the IRQ and routes the requests to the appropriate hardware. Anyway, I wanted to know if FreeBSD was capable of programming the PCI PNP devices, so that I have access to them. Just for the Info, the Motherboard is made by PC-CHIPS, model m767v, and uses the BxToo chipset, with a Sis6326 Video Controller and CMI8330/C3D Sound Chip on board. Linux also has a problem with the sound chip, and X-windows doesn't seem to recognize that the video is AGP with 8Meg of ram. If FreeBSD is compatible, I would very much like to give it a whirl. By the way I have read all the FAQ's about PNP on your website and didn't really get the answers I was looking for. Thanks, Joe Wyatt wyattj@mcs.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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