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Date:      Wed, 03 Jan 1996 16:25:40 +0100
From:      Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.tfs.com>
To:        Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
Cc:        jkh@time.cdrom.com, hasty@rah.star-gate.com, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeDetect & Plug n Play 
Message-ID:  <1547.820682740@critter.tfs.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 03 Jan 1996 15:48:07 %2B0100." <199601031448.PAA22549@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> 

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> > There actually is a P&P for ISA, where the motherboard completely disables
> > all but one slot, so you know what you found where.
> 
> I must first say that I don't know exactly how PnP works on ISA,
> but I believe that in the standard there are no dedicated lines on
> the ISA bus so that one can disable a single slot.

I think the idea is you gate the RD,WR,IORD,IOWR strobes on the mother
board, on a per slot basis.

> I have recently come across a data sheet for a TI 16550 (UART)
> clone with PnP support, and from the data sheet it seems that the
> selection of specific devices is done in software by running a
> protocol on a few I/O ports.
yes, that's how it works.

> Basically (details may be incorrect), ISA PnP devices all listen
> for writes on a couple of ports (one is the printer status, so that
> nobody should write there). There the CPU issues commands that are
> understood by PnP devices. Using some binary-search technique one
> can disable all but one device, identify it, set its I/O address
> and other stuff, and then continue with the next devices.
Yes, for PnP ISA devices, the slot-disabling was for handling
old-fashioned non-PnP devices in PnP isa-slots.

> To come back to Poul's mail: in general, it should not be the
> motherboard which disables the slot, it is the software that disables
> PnP cards. Of course *some* motherboards might do what Poul says,
> but this is not generally applicable. On the other end, PnP compliant
> devices should work on all motherboards.
Yes, we are in agreement, it's two different mechanisms, to handle
two different problems.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp           | phk@FreeBSD.ORG       FreeBSD Core-team.
http://www.freebsd.org/~phk | phk@login.dknet.dk    Private mailbox.
whois: [PHK]                | phk@ref.tfs.com       TRW Financial Systems, Inc.
Future will arrive by its own means, progress not so.



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