🚀 go-pugleaf

Thomas Andres <tandres@iiic.ethz.ch> wrote:
> Das ist mir schon bekannt. PnP PCI ist auch unter Windows kein Problem.

To my knowledge, there is no PnP add-on to PCI cards: the PCI specification
in itself is sufficient to do the I/O port, memory and interrupt allocation
(and all the other PCI configuration).

PnP is something which was designed as an after-thought to make the
installation of ISA cards easier. Infact, as soon as you have ONE
non-PnP ISA card, PnP makes everything harder. Usually you need
to go in the (mainboard) BIOS setup subsystem and select the PCI/PnP
menu. There you MUST declare all the non PnP interrupts. Usually you
can't declare the memory, I/O ports or DMA channels there, however,
so conflicts can still happen.

The only problem is that some (mainboard) BIOS configure the cards
wrong, but that is usually fixed by Linux afterwards.

So, in summary, if you see a ``PnP'' PCI card and a PCI card, both
are equivalent.

That is at least my understanding.

NB: The Amiga hardware had the AutoConfig(r) add-on card automatic
    configuration in 1985 already, similar to the PCI way. The PC
    ``architecture'' was badly lacking there, until PCI became
    standard.  To my knowledge, the Macintosh/Lisa NuBus, same time,
    also had a kind of auto-configuration.