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Plug-and-Play-HOWTO

David S.Lawyer mailto:dave@lafn.org

v1.07, August 2003

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Help with understanding and dealing with the complex Plug-and-Play (PnP) issue. How to get PnP to work on your PC (if it doesn't already). It doesn't cover what's called "Universal Plug and Play" (UPnP). See Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)

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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
• 2.8 "Resources" for both Device and Driver
• 2.9 The Problem
• 2.10 PnP Finds Devices Plugged Into Serial Ports

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

4. Setting up a PnP BIOS

• 4.1 Do you have a PnP operating system?
• 4.2 How are bus-resources to be controlled?
• 4.3 Reset the configuration?

5. How to Deal with PnP Cards

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

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 PCI Bus Inspection
• 7.7 ISA Bus Introduction
• 7.8 ISA PnP cards
• 7.9 Non-PnP Cards
• 7.10 Non-PnP Cards with jumpers
• 7.11 Neither PnP nor jumpers
• 7.12 Use MS Windows

8. Error Messages

• 8.1 Unexpected Interrupt
• 8.2 Plug and Play Configuration Error (Dell BIOS)

9. Appendix

• 9.1 Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)
• 9.2 Address Details
• 9.3 ISA Bus Configuration Addresses (Read-Port etc.)
• 9.4 Interrupts --Details
• 9.5 PCI Interrupts
• 9.6 ISA Isolation

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