> Yes, but it depends on the card.  For example, many add-on serial
> cards and SCSI cards use open-drain outputs which specifically support
> sharing of IRQs.

  Hmm. I'd like to have a kernel compile option that controls whether
or not any ISA irqs are shared. Thus, I'd get a warning that things
were in conflict. What you have said confirms my belief that sharing
irqs on ISA is a special case. 

> The 509 gets its settings from NVRAM.  I would consider it highly
> bogus for our software (or any other) to simply reconfigure the card

  Uh, there is a whole business with port 0x100 on 509s. Anytime I've
tried to software config 509's I've had them moved by
drivers. (Hmm. Let me think... not NetBSD. BSDi.)
  My impression was that 509's got the configuration from software. It
just wasn't the PnP standard way until the 509B came out.

]                Physical location: Somewhere on planet earth!               [
]          Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON          [
]        mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/       [
] panic("Just another NetBSD/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy"); [