> 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? :)
I've written a (fairly crude) utility to configure PnP ISA cards which
you may find helpful. It doesn't configure the DMA or Memory parts
yet as I didn't need them, but if there's any demand I could fix
that fairly easily. It allows you to configure a cards IO address(es)
and interrupts, then activate it so it will respond to accesses. I
use it in my rc files to enable my internal fax/modem card.
See ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/unix/linux/utils/isapnptools-1.0.tgz
For example my config file looks like this:
# LD n = Logical device, ie write to reg 7
# IO n = IO descriptor n
# BASE n = IO/Mem address
# INT n = Interrupt req n
# IRQ n = Interrupt level
# MODE = line levels etc
# ACT = Activate
#(debug)
(IGNORECRC)
(READPORT 0x3bb)
(ISOLATE)
(IDENTIFY *)
(CONFIGURE DFX0000/1493 (LD 0 (IO 0 (BASE 0x3e8)) (INT 0 (IRQ 12 (MODE +E))) (ACT Y)))
(WAITFORKEY)
-- Peter Fox