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Date:      Thu, 22 Feb 1996 20:55:15 +1100
From:      Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, koshy@india.hp.com
Subject:   Re: ISA device irq/mem auto-configuration
Message-ID:  <199602220955.UAA03013@godzilla.zeta.org.au>

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>Consider a network card : If the kernel has been configured for say, 
>IRQ 5 but the actual board was detected at IRQ 11, whats the right thing to 
>do? We could :

>(a) Ignore the board : this can be pretty frustrating to the user.

>(b) Print out some informative message : stating something like 
>    "board setup for IRQ XX but kernel was configured for YY" and leave
>    it at that.  

>(c) Take in the new IRQ setting somehow and do the right thing.

>Option (C) seems to me to be the right thing from the users point of
>view; I don't know enough of the FreeBSD kernel to tell if it is feasible.

Option (B) is right because if the user wanted the irq to be auto-detected
then they would have specified this in the configuration.

>I have seen in some places "-1" being used as a kind of "wildcard" address
>in some drivers.  Is this a convention?

The wildcard for irqs is actually 0.  This is standard.  "irq ?" in the
config file translates to id_irq == 0 in the isa device table.
Unfortunately, and unspecified "irq" in the config file also translates
to id_irq == 0 in the isa device table.  The ambiguity isn't much of a
problem in practice because there are few device [driver]s that support
both auto irqs and not using an irq at all.

Bruce



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