[ltp] hw configuration issues_¡PS2.EXE,_adiós!

[Thomas Hood]

Question for Till:

What is the difference between pcmcia-cs's support
for the PnP BIOS and the isa-pnp's support for Pnp
devices?  

Why doesn't the isa-pnp module find any devices?
I always get this in /var/log/messages when I
insmod isa-pnp.o

Feb 23 11:37:15 thanatos kernel: isapnp: Scanning for Pnp cards...
Feb 23 11:37:15 thanatos kernel: isapnp: No Plug & Play device found

Thomas

--- Till.Straumann@TU-Berlin.de wrote: > Hi all.
> 
> When I started playing with the new release of
> IBM's modem driver (big thanks, you people at IBM), I quickly
> found that resource (especially IRQ) conflicts are hard to avoid.
> This means that frequently rebooting to dos and running PS2.EXE
> was necessary (tpctl is great, but it permits only volatile
> configuration of the serial port, IR and parallel port).
> 
> So thought I - but fortunately, I was WRONG.
> 
> Thanks to DAVID HINDS (bless him the great penguin)! The
> pcmcia package already contains PNP-BIOS support 
> (must be enabled when configuring/compiling the pcmcia
> package) and the utilities "lspnp" and "setpnp".
> CHECK THESE OUT.
> 
>    lspnp [-v] [-vv]
> 
> prints the actual configuration as well as all allowed
> configurations of all ISA PNP devices. [Note that the 
> pcmcia_core module must be loaded].
> 
> Using "setpnp", you can reconfigure interrupts, ioports
> as needed, under linux.
> 
> You also can write your configurations to the BIOS, just
> specify the '-b' option to 'setpnp'.
> 
> RTM.
> 
> Notes:
> 
> --- I found that certain changes _must_ be written to
> the BIOS and require a reboot to be effective (although
> they show up in lspnp -vv, they are not effective).
> Other settings may well be changed on the fly, just
> give it a try and YMMV. In general, it seems that
> most resource settings can be changed, but it seems not
> to be possible to enable devices that are disabled in the
> bios without rebooting (setpnp -b can be used for that
> purpose, though).
> 
> E.g., if you serial port is disabled in the bios
> (PS2 SERA DISABLE), although it is possible to do
> 
>   setpnp xx ioport 0x3f8 irq 4
> 
> this wont really enable the port. However, it _is_ possible to do
> 
>   setpnp -b xx ioport 0x3f8 irq 4
> 
> and reboot. This still saves you one reboot and manipulating
> the bios settings using lspnp/setpnp is more comfortable than
> using PS2.EXE. Using "setpnp -b", you can enable all devices
> and just turn their interrupt off. On the running system, you
> may then selectively enable any interrupts needed, load and
> configure drivers etc.
> 
> --- If you play with both, "tpctl" and "setpnp", both
> tools will display inconsistent settings. It seems that each
> tool displays its own settings only. The last one used
> determines the effective settings, however.
> 
> --- If you modify your configuration in order to free resources
> for being used by PC-cards, you must unload - reload the core
> (i.e. essentially, the whole pcmcia module stack) module,
> so it sees the new irqs.
> 
> --- It was easy to separate the pnp-bios stuff from the
> rest of the pcmcia modules, i.e. move it to a separate
> module [in case there is any interest: contact me].
> 
> --- Pnp-bios must be enabled in the "Easy-Setup" [I never
> understood that stupid name for this reduced-feature setup].
> This means, that the so called "Quick-boot" [another
> braindamaged name] feature under "Config" must be enabled.
> 
> --- Another goodie: PS2.EXE wouldn't let you use the same
> interrupt for IR and the serial port. However, as long as
> you use the serial driver for both of them (using SIR,
> "irattach" and the irtty line discipline), LINUX would
> be / is capable of sharing one IRQ for serial/IR. "setpnp"
> enables you to configure the hardware as needed :-)
> 
> --- Till.
> 
> -- 
>    "The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition."
>                                              Vladimir Nabokov.
> 
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