37
Plug and Play: PCI Auto-configuration
The BIOS automatically configures PCI devices and Plug and Play devices. PCI
devices may be onboard or add-in cards. Plug and Play devices are ISA add-in
cards built to meet the Plug and Play specification. Auto-configuration lets a user
insert or remove PCI or Plug and Play cards without having to configure the system.
When a user turns on the system after adding a PCI or Plug and Play card, the BIOS
automatically configures interrupts, the I/O space, and other system resources. Any
interrupts set to Available in Setup are considered to be available for use by the add-
in card.
PCI interrupts are distributed to available ISA interrupts that have not been assigned
to an ISA card or to system resources. The assignment of PCI interrupts to ISA
IRQ’s is non-deterministic. PCI devices can share an interrupt, but an ISA device
cannot share an interrupt allocated to PCI or to another ISA device. Auto-
configuration information is stored in the extended system configuration data (ESCD)
format.
PCI IDE Support
If Auto is selected as a primary or secondary IDE device in Setup, the BIOS
automatically sets up the two local-bus IDE connectors with independent I/O channel
support. The IDE interface supports hard drives up to PIO Mode 4 and recognises
any ATAPI devices, including CD-ROM drives and tape drives. The BIOS
determines the capabilities of each drive and configures them so as to optimise
capacity and performance. To take advantage of the high-capacity storage devices,
hard drives are automatically configured for logical block addressing (LBA) and to
PIO Mode 3 or 4, depending on the capability of the drive. To override the auto-
configuration options, use the specific IDE device options in Setup. The ATAPI
specification recommends that ATAPI devices be configured as shown in
Table 7
.
Table 7
Primary Cable
Secondary
Cable
Configuration
Drive 0 Drive 1
Drive 0 Drive 1
Normal, no ATAPI
ATA
Disk and CD-ROM for enhanced
IDE systems
ATA
ATAPI
Legacy IDE system with only one
cable
ATA ATAPI
Enhanced IDE with a tape and CD-
ROM or two CD-ROMs
ATA
ATAPI
ATAPI