On Wed, Mar 17, 1999 at 08:24:41AM +0000, Jules Bean wrote: > > > This discussion is in the context of the PC architecture. > > > > Regardless of the context, I don't see why you have to ditch serial and > > parallel ports if you get rid of ISA. There are still a lot of legacy > > devices out there and a PCI serial/parallel adapter can't cost that > > much. > > Well, I don't understand the AT/XT architectures. > > However, my limited understanding is that currently serial and parallel > ports are always reached by well-known IRQs and well-known port locations, > via the ISA bus. I don't know of a supported way to put them on the PCI > bus instead. > > New BIOSes support USB, I believe. Actually, think for a second about the ne2k... There are half a dozen different PCI versions of this venerable (not to mention CHEAP!) network card out there. It's not the fastest card, not the highest performance, but it does work (and it's CHEAP! as I already noted) so it refuses to die, even though the ISA bus it came from is now gone. Pretty much what you do is you take the internals of the card and instead of attaching them to legacy port/irq's you attach them to the PCI bus. The actual locations of the ports and stuff only really matters to dos anymore and either windoze or a (very small) TSR will virtualize the ports for you. In fact, it's probable that your BIOS may virtualize known PCI devices for you! How do you think USB keyboards work on PCs in DOS eh? There's no magic driver disk, just BIOS interface layer. -- Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian GNU/Linux developer PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBE The Source Comes First! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "...It was a lot faster than I thought it was going to be, much faster than NT. If further speed increases are done to the server for the final release, Oracle is going to be able to wipe their ass with SQL SERVER and hand it back to M$ while the Oracle admins ... migrate their databases over to Linux!"
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