4.1 Introduction to Dealing with PnP Devices
Today almost all new internal boards (cards) are Plug-and-Play (PnP). Thus, the configuring of bus-resources should, in almost all cases be entirely automatic. If a device is not working, see if it was detected, possibly by rebooting. If the device driver can't resource-configure it, then hopefully one or more of methods 2-6 will:
- Device Driver Configures
- /sys User Interface Configures kernel 2.6 + (not for PCI yet, other severe limitations)
- BIOS Configures (For the PCI bus you only need a PCI BIOS, otherwise you need a PnP BIOS)
- ISA cards only: Disable PnP by jumpers or DOS/Windows software (but many cards can't do this)
- ISA Bus: Isapnp is a program you can always use to configure ISA PnP devices
- PCI Utilities is for configuring the PCI bus but the device driver should handle it
- Windows Configures and then you boot Linux from within Windows/DOS. Use as a last resort
Any of the above will set the bus-resources in the hardware but only the first one (and possibly the second) tells the driver what has been done. How the driver gets informed depends on the driver. You may need to do something to inform it. See Tell the Driver the Configuration
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