On Sat, 12 Jun 1999, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 11, 1999 at 04:41:13PM -0700, R. C. Dowdeswell wrote:
> > Would any of these calls enable PCI PNP to work with PNP OS
> > set to yes?  This is a pretty serious issue for my company that
> > I am trying to resolve pretty quickly...
> 
> No. The problem when PNP OS is set to yes is that the BIOS doesn't configure
> the PCI bus at all (which breacks the PCI specs), this has to be done by
> the OS. NetBSD doesn't do this because it's supposed to be done by the BIOS
> (it's supposed to know better the hardware than the OS, isn't it ? :)


Wait, this smells like Chicken and Egg.

Isn't the -point- of Plug-n-Play to allow an OS to completely configure 
the PCI bus they way it wants?  If you know you have a PnP system, then
the OS should be able to configure it.

I'll grant you that some peripherals are usually glued onto the motherboard's
PCI these days, like USB controllers.  But the rest of the cards plugged
in are not known to the bios.

Also, do you have chapter and verse from the PCI specs that say the bios
is responsible for configuration?  I'd like to understand the reasoning
there.

Thanks!  -Mike