Re: 3c90x drivers

[Robert Thompson <robertt@stargate.cs.swau.edu>]

In regards to PCI PnP:
I may just be blowing smoke here, but I believe that the BIOS PnP setting
controls how the PCI BIOS remembers resource assignments between boots. I
believe it also may control whether the card is automatically assigned
resources. Frankly, I don't know for sure.
 
The reason it came up was that when I boot the Etherboot 3c90x boot code,
either from floppy, or from my lone 3c905B-TXM, success depends on the
BIOS being told that I am _NOT_ running a PnP OS. Later I will post a more
exact description when I am sitting at one of these machines.

Basically, if 'PnP OS'=YES, the bootprom (sleep)s while probing for card.
If 'PnP OS'=NO, the bootprom finds the card instantly, and continues on
its way. Just from memory, it appeared that in PnP=YES it detects the
card, then fails to find it... 

It's late. I'll shut up before i REALLY confuse myself... =)



On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Markus Gutschke wrote:

|
|> 
|> On 1/20/2000 12:09 PM markus@gutschke.com Markus Gutschke wrote:
|> >For PnP cards, etherboot would have to run full PnP discovery and
|> >configuration. This is not incredibly difficult, but it is inherently
|> >less reliable than accessing non-PnP cards. 
|> 
|> I'm getting confused. For the 3C90x series we're talking about PCI cards, 
|> which as I understand it are all "PnP".  Could this be some PCI 2.x 
|> compatibility switch setting or something?  If this were ISA cards I'd 
|
|Oh. I thought we were talking ISA/PnP here. For ISA/PnP you need to
|do all kinds of black magic to discover and allocate resources. This
|should not be neccessary for PCI cards, because its the BIOS's job
|to do this for you.
|
|
|Markus
|
|

-- 
=========================================================================
Robert Thompson <thompson@cs.swau.edu>  Southwestern Adventist University
"My opinions are my own. Want one?"      Department of Computer Science

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