Re: CONFIG_PNP: Please change the name

Bernd Eckenfels (ukd1@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de)
17 Mar 1996 17:45:20 GMT


Mike Kilburn (duxmike@iafrica.com) wrote:
> One of our engineers is busy adding PnP to our ISA WAN board. He thought
> the system was quite nice. After reading the specs from Intel, I also
> thought is was a good system. Why do you think its useless? I would
> be very interested in any pitfalls you are aware of.

The biggets problem is mixing new with old hardware. The simplest problem is
using isa cards in PNP PCI Systems. You have no chance to tell the PNP Cards
how they should configure themself if the make wrong asumptions. The
Resources for ISA Cards need to be reserved in the Bios Setu which is not
always woking correctly or easy to do. Another Problem is, that
Softconfigured Cards require Support from special OSes to even make them
Run. I like Jumpers on a card much more, there I can actually see and be
sure whats going on. The Problem ist not the PNP itself, but the mixture
with non PNP Components, the Software Requirements and the Bios Extensions.

A good Example are the new Teles 1.3 ISDN Cards. You can configure them
only under Windows or dos, and you can only stick two of them in one system
cause they have only 2 config-ports.

Of course PNP is very helpfull (Eisa, MCA, PCI) if it works right... the
question is... does it work right? :)

Greetings
Bernd

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