root@chaos.analogic.com (Richard B. Johnson) wrote on 03.01.02 in <Pine.LNX.3.95.1020103100747.4554A-100000@chaos.analogic.com>:
> ISA has nothing. Just fixed port addressing where an attempt
> is made to find out something about the hardware by writing
> and reading the results. If you think you have device 'A'
> at port N, but you don't, and you write something to condition
> device 'A' for a response, you could, in fact, tell another
> device to hit the reset switch or, worse, format your disk(s).
Best-known example is probably trying to autodetect anything but a NE2000
card before detecting the NE2000 card that's in the machine.
I've even seen BIOSes freeze in that situation. And yes, I do mean whole-
machine-freeze. An NE2000 *really* doesn't like being touched the wrong
way.
MfG Kai
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