On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 11:59:38AM -0800, Jon Pennington wrote:
--- Milnes Terry SSgt 52 LG/LGOP
wrote: PCI Cards are PnP. ISA cards come in two flavors PnP capable and jumpered/hybrid. PCI cards for the most part are capable to use any IRQ.
That's not symantically true, either. PCI is not PnP, because PnP is an extension of ISA. PCI is, by nature, resource-friendly. A PCI bios knows what to do with a PCI device, and a PCI device communicates with the BIOS to know which resources it prefers, and the PCI BIOS acts accordingly, as it can.
PnP does these same things (in a more limited fashion), but PnP settings on a motherboard have nothing to do with PCI devices, unless you have legacy devices configured for resources that a PCI device wants. Even in this situation, the PCI device and the BIOS negotiate for workable resources.
If you have no ISA devices at all, you can turn PnP off in the BIOS and the OS will never know the difference. Yes, SBLive! family cards are PCI. ;)
Actually you may *have* to turn it off anyway...it can have side effects in linux. For example, with PnP on in the BIOS of the PC I am typing this at, the alsa sound modules won't load. And this PC has not a single ISA slot. -- Regards Cliff