Plug-and-Play-HOWTO

David S.Lawyer mailto:dave@lafn.org

1. Introduction

• 1.1 1. Copyright, Trademarks, Disclaimer, & Credits
• 1.2 Future Plans; You Can Help
• 1.3 New Versions of this HOWTO
• 1.4 New in Recent Versions
• 1.5 General Introduction. Do you need this HOWTO?

2. What PnP Should Do: Allocate "Bus-Resources"

• 2.1 What is Plug-and-Play (PnP)?
• 2.2 How a Computer Finds Devices (and conversely)
• 2.3 Addresses
• 2.4 I/O Addresses and Allocating Them
• 2.5 Memory Ranges
• 2.6 IRQs --Overview
• 2.7 DMA Channels (not for PCI bus)
• 2.8 "Resources" for both Device and Driver
• 2.9 Resources are Limited

3. The Plug-and-Play (PnP) Solution

• 3.1 Introduction to PnP
• 3.2 How It Works (simplified)
• 3.3 Starting Up the PC
• 3.4 Buses
• 3.5 How Linux Does PnP
• 3.6 Problems with Linux PnP

4. Setting up a PnP BIOS

• 4.1 Do you have a PnP operating system?
• 4.2 Assigning Resources by the BIOS
• 4.3 Reset the configuration?

5. How to Deal with PnP Cards

• 5.1 Introduction to Dealing with
• 5.2 Device Driver Configures, Reserving Resources
• 5.3 /sys User Interface Configures
• 5.4 BIOS Configures
• 5.5 ISA cards only: Disable PnP ?
• 5.6 ISA Bus: Isapnp (part of isapnptools)
• 5.7 PCI Utilities
• 5.8 Windows Configures
• 5.9 PnP Software/Documents

6. Tell the Driver the Configuration

• 6.1 Introduction
• 6.2 Serial Port Driver Example
• 6.3 Some Sound Card Driver Examples (from year 2000)

7. How Do I Find Devices and How Are They Configured?

• 7.1 Finding and How-Configured Are Related
• 7.2 Devices Have Two "Configurations"
• 7.3 Finding Hardware
• 7.4 Boot-time Messages
• 7.5 The /proc Directory Tree
• 7.6 The /sys Directory Tree
• 7.7 PCI Bus Inspection
• 7.8 ISA Bus Introduction
• 7.9 ISA PnP cards
• 7.10 Non-PnP Cards
• 7.11 Non-PnP Cards with jumpers
• 7.12 Neither PnP nor jumpers
• 7.13 Use MS Windows

8. PnP for External and Plug-in Devices

• 8.1 USB Bus
• 8.2 Hot Plug

9. Hot Swap

• 9.1 PnP Finds Devices Plugged Into Serial Ports

10. Error Messages

• 10.1 Unexpected Interrupt
• 10.2 Plug and Play Configuration Error (Dell BIOS)
• 10.3 isapnp: Write Data Register 0xa79 already used (from logs)

11. Appendix

• 11.1 Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)
• 11.2 Address Details
• 11.3 ISA Bus Configuration Addresses (Read-Port etc.)
• 11.4 Interrupts --Details
• 11.5 PCI Interrupts
• 11.6 ISA Isolation
• 11.7 Bus Mastering and DMA resources
• 11.8 Historical and Obsolete