Excerpts from netbsd: 12-Sep-97 P200 crashing while probing..
explorer@flame.org (467)

> Does the PCI system assume the BIOS has nailed the PCI cards down at
> bootup?

Yes, it does. PCI specification says that "firmware" does this job.
There are newer BIOSes which habe a setup option
like "Plug-and-Play aware OS".
This should be switched off, otherwise the BIOS might
choose to leave devices unmapped which it doesn't
need for boot.

best regards
Matthias Drochner