From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Sep 20 13:17:58 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA00799 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 20 Sep 1996 13:17:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id NAA00775 for ; Fri, 20 Sep 1996 13:17:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id NAA02942; Fri, 20 Sep 1996 13:15:46 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199609202015.NAA02942@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Plug and Play naivety To: smpatel@umiacs.umd.edu (Sujal Patel) Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 13:15:46 -0700 (MST) Cc: janus@freegate.net, hackers@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: from "Sujal Patel" at Sep 20, 96 02:14:14 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > 1. mail from Sujal notes that "if your motherboard supports PnP > > devices, then you don't need this code". What does this mean? > > I've been told that the BIOS on the machine I'm using has > > "Plug and Play" support ... does this mean it's possible that the > > BIOS has queried the ISA devices on boot and already has all the > > config info? Can I get at this somehow from the kernel? Or is this > > only referring to PCI kind of Plug and Play? > > The PnP-aware BIOS will configure all ISA PnP cards (to the best of it's > ability) during the boot up cycle. If the BIOS gets this wrong (which it > often does), you'll need to either use the PnP driver or turn if PnP (if > the device supports that option). This exchange implies that the kernel will not use the PnP information in the presence of a PnP BIOS to configure the drivers. Can you confirm or deny this? The benefit of the PnP code is not simply configuration of devices in the absence of a PnP BIOS, but also in the provision of hints to the device drivers. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.