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The Answer Guy

By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
LinuxCare, http://www.linuxcare.com/

isapnptools

From David B. Sarraf on Sun, 30 Jan 2000

James:

I recently read this question regarding the ethernet card. You mentioned that the card may be configured to a base address which autoprobe was not looking at. I agree that this may be a problem. You advised the reader to use boot-time parameters. That is a workable approach however I try to avoid it whenever possible.

I have had very good results using isapnptools, which came with my RedHat 5.1 distro. I used it to configure a modem card and a network card. Between the well engineered software and the excellent documentation the process was quite painless and eminently successful. Now I have cards that work and which run at well-defined and well-known addresses and IRQs and I don't need the boot parameters.

That's probably very good advice.

I've never used isapnptools and I usually forget that they even exist. Could you give an example of HOW you use them?

I recently ran into a similar situation with a 3-com card. It had been taken out of a PNP system and put into a stock ISA system. I knew it to be a PNP card but I did not realize that it had been set to use the same IRQ as the floppy drive controller and isapnptools would not detect this card. This caused much head scratching until I put it back in a PNP system and ran 3Com's "disable PNP mode" software. Still, I was successfull at using the card without boot parameters.

None of this is meant as a criticism of your initial advice. It is just my experience with an alternative method.

Dave Sarraf