🚀 go-pugleaf

bjornarb@sofus.hiof.no (Bjornar Bjornerud) wrote:
>Be aware that due to some "errors" in the chipsets on rev A-C(D?) you can't 
>get these adapters PCI 2.0 compliant. Not by doing BIOS-upgrades only.
>To resolve this BusLogic offered a free trade on these adapters in spring -95 
>to a rev E that had upgraded chipsets. I don't know if BusLogic has still 
>got this offer. 
>The rev E is to my experience fully 2.0 compliant with full Plug & Prey support

"Plug & Prey"?  - that's probably a type but...

Sometimes I feel like Prey when dealing with PnP bios & pci adapters.

"Plug & Pray"? - also appropriate...

Whenever I install a new PCI board, I never know what IRQ will get
assigned to it.  The PCI board may get an IRQ assigned to an ISA board
and then the trouble begins.  I have several Micron systems with
Phoenix BIOS and Buslogic BT946C controllers.  Three different MB
bioses - three different IRQ's assigned to the Buslogic board!
HI54M-02PM -> IRQ 11
HI54M-09PM -> IRQ 15
HI54M-10PM -> IRQ 10
Needless to say this plays havoc with system configurations with
systems like SCO unix which won't boot if there is an irq conflict.
There is no method that I have found to assign an IRQ to a specific
PCI board with Phoenix and/or Buslogic's bioses.

The reason this is a problem may not be obvious to some readers...

We had a system with a defective motherboard that failed after about 6
months.  No problem - just swap motherboards with the same
configuration - right?  Wrong!  The new motherboard had a newer bios
which chose a different IRQ for the buslogic than the earlier one
which conflicted with the network adapter and SCO paniced on boot (as
it should).  Only solution was to flash the bios back to the earlier
level to get the IRQ assigned where we had SCO configured for it.

So, the questions are:

Are there any bioses out there that let you determine resource
assignment for PCI adapters?
Is there a Buslogic bios that allows you to force the IRQ to a
specific one and is it possible with PCI?
Where is a good source of info about PCI in regard to actually
explaining how all this works and how to live with it.

Toby

PS I never had these problems with ISA boards...
Toby L. Kraft, Kraft Enterprises, Inc., Evansville. IN USA