Hello Nathan!

  NJW> I'm not talking about the conventional ISA PnP
     > framework. The plain 3c509 cards have a mechanisim
     > that allows the OS to find the cards, their IO
     > adresss, and their IRQ.

That sounds useful, how does it work?

  NJW> This is much better than most of the jumpered and
     > nonjumpered cards, where you had to guess at the IO
     > address, and if you were lucky enough to know the
     > right IO address, you still had to guess at the IRQ
     > - the cards didn't provide a way to query this.

A properly documented machine should have both the I/O
address and IRQ line of the NIC recorded somewhere, but
since we don't live in that perfect world the approach you
describe sounds really useful.  Even if your machine is
properly documented, you don't have to pick up the manual!
<grin>

Regards,
 
-Andy.

_____________________________________________
Free email with cool domains at FriendlyEmail
http://www.mypad.com/