On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, at 3:51pm, Rich C wrote: >> Not exactly. The cards themselves do not determine their configuration, > > Read my post again. I did not say that the card did this.
Er, I just read your post again, and you did say that. However, you asked us not to quote you, so I won't. :-) I understood you were not clear on the matter, and I was trying to clarify things. >> and they need no non-volatile storage. The host computer (either the >> BIOS, or the OS, or some other program) gives them their configuration. > > Some cards DO keep their own configurations, although it may be only ISA > cards which do this. Sorry, no. The context of your remark was the "Reset Configuration Data" setting. That setting applies to the ESCD the BIOS maintains, which is not kept on the cards. Both PCI and ISA PnP cards get the configuration from the host computer; they have no say in it themselves. (Well, that isn't strictly true; the cards can report their limitations, e.g., that only certain IRQs, DMAs, or memory ranges will work. But the host (specifically, the PnP enumerator) tells them what to actually use.) It is certianly possible for a card to keep *other* settings in NVRAM (e.g., the volume on an internal modem), but that is not what you were talking about. > Frequently, without a PnP BIOS to configure them, you needed a special > configuration program (certain Adaptec ISA SCSI adapters do this) to set > the IRQ and DMA (if applicable.) As I said in *my* post: me> Before ISA PnP, it was common enough to have ISA cards which were me> configured using software, but each card had its own me> interface and program for doing so. ... and ... me> Basically, if you have any non-PnP cards in your system, the BIOS (and me> maybe even the OS) has no way of knowing what resources they are using. So, again, that has nothing to do with the "Reset Configuration Data" setting. :-) > Not true in all cases. Some BIOSes will keep the setting on Enabled ... Interesting. I have never seen that before. > ... and you will see the "ESCD update success..." message on every boot. That is not necessarilly unrelated. Sometimes, the "ESCD update" message will always appear, even when the "Reset Configuration Data" is set to "Disabled". I do not know if that is because the BIOS designers just felt it better to regenerate it every time, or because some piece of hardware is causing the BIOS to think it needs to, or because the BIOS is buggy, or what. :-) -- Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
