Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 18:10:34 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith) Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: PnP support Message-ID: <199709121810.LAA00404@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <199709120622.QAA01532@word.smith.net.au> from "Mike Smith" at Sep 12, 97 04:21:58 pm
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> > A specific example might be a AE-3 ethernet card and DOS. Change > > the IRQ on the card, and when DOS comes up, the driver load in the > > AUTOEXEC.BAT has the wrong IRQ parameter. > > Really? Who does Artisoft's hardware these days? They shouldn't. Eagle, the same people who do Novell's. > Is the AE-3 another 8390x design, like the AE-2? If so, and unless > they have their own ISA interface, you can only reconfigure the > hardware by munging the onboard EEPROM, not something that's likely to > happen with FreeBSD. (Especially as you have to reset the device to > force it to reload). That's precisely what we were talking about doing: relocating it by modifying the contents of the EEPROM. In my opinion, it would be useful to have an interface at the driver to be able to do this (we could write a generic WD configuration type utility), but it would be *absolutely terrible* to do this as part of the PnP framework's normal operation. > Also, if the card can be soft-set on the fly, the driver should be > reading the setting out of the card and using that, or coercing the > card to match the commandline setting. Allowing irreconcilable > redundant configuration is an unforgivable design error. It's not reduant. The (only* configuration the thing has is EEPROM. If you want to relocate the card, you modify the EEPROM contents. It's a non-PnP card which can be relocated. > No, I don't believe it is. "relocating" to my mind involves taking a > device and moving it _right_here_and_now_. What you are talking about > is an out-of-band reconfiguration, ie. you reconfigure the device and > then reboot, wherupon it takes up new parameters. A reboot may be required, if the device is stupid, yes. Another reason why "because it can be done" is not the same as "it should be done". Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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