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6. ISA Devices
ISA and VESA Local Bus (VLB) devices are non-self-identifying, and must
therefore be determined by other means. The Device Configuration Assistant
has created a few BEFs to look for standard system devices. These BEFs,
known as half- or probe-always BEFs, are in the probe-always directories
and are run on every boot. Any directory in the solaris/drivers/isa.000
to isa.099 range is considered probe-always. The directories are
searched and any BEFs found therein are executed in the directory order
found. This allows an order to be placed on the BEF execution. This is
more important for the non-probe-always BEFs. Currently, the standard devices
for which new BEFs have been written include:
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Floppy
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Joystick or game port
-
Keyboard
-
Logitech bus mouse
-
Microsoft mouse
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Parallel
-
PS/2 mouse
-
Serial
These BEFs are typically simple.
BEFs that handle ISA devices scan for them and report back the devices
and resources used. A few BEFs are non-bootable to handle the audio cards.
Currently the ISA devices selectively probed for are:
-
3Com EtherLink 3C509 Ethernet
-
AMD PCnet-ISA 79C960/PCnet-32 79C965 Ethernet
-
Boca serial ports card
-
DPT PM2011/9X SCSI
-
IDE
-
Mylex 32-bit SCSI
-
PCIC controllers
-
Sound Blaster
-
Windows Sound System Compatible
The device ID used for any scanned device comes from the master
file. It finds the first entry in the master device database file
that uses the loaded BEF that is of the ISA bus type.
If an ISA device is not one that the Solaris software supports, then
it must still be added to the configuration by manually specifying its
resources. This ensures that the resources do not get assigned to a programmable
device (currently just PnP ISA). To do this a set of menus has been created
to allow specific resources to be set.
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