🚀 go-pugleaf

[Posted and mailed]

In article <33FC7B8F.6AB21BA4@jlms.com>,
	Adriel Ickler <adriel@jlms.com> writes:
> IMHO: Plug and play is evil, a work of the devil. it should be
> eliminated from the earth.

I don't much care for it, either, but that doesn't mean it's going away;
and as more and more PnP hardware is released and less and less non-PnP
fare, Linux users will either have to obtain PnP support or they'll have
to give up on new hardware.

> I had a customer who needed an upgrade of His 486, I gave him a P133/32
> megs ram, etc and I convinced him that NT 4.0 was MUCH more stable than
> Win 95 (I never reccomend linux for Users, they have a hard enough time
> understanding how to use the GUI). anywho, he had one of the most evil
> devices I have ever encountered: a USR WinModem (Ack) this device had
> absolutely NO jumpers of any kind, and the only way to use this device
> was in Win95 or Win 3.1

Nice story.  Unfortunately it has nothing to do with PnP per se.  The
fundamental reason why the WinModem won't work in WinNT is the same
reason that it won't work in OS/2 or Linux:  The thing requires
specialized drivers that don't exist in these OSes.  This is *NOT* part
of the PnP spec, and this sort of lack of driver support is not unique to
PnP devices.  For instance, I once had a modem/sound card with an IBM
Mwave DSP on it.  This board was released *BEFORE* PnP became available,
it was not marketed as being PnP, it had no PnP associations whatsoever
-- but just like the USR WinModem, it would not work in Linux or WinNT
(though it did have OS/2 support).

Please, PnP has enough problems without falsely accusing it of having
more.

-- 
Rod Smith                                 Author of:
rodsmith@indiana.edu.uceprotect           "Should I Buy OS/2" FAQ
http://php.indiana.edu/~rodsmith          "OS/2 Soundcard Summary"
NOTE: Remove "uceprotect" from address to e-mail me