From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Adam Wiggins Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 18:59:04 +0000 Subject: Re: AWE64 initial questions Message-Id: List-Id: References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-sound@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 11 Sep 1998, Hamish Moffatt wrote: > What's wrong with isapnptools? Works fine for me. Setting up /etc/isapnp.conf > is a bit harder than letting Windows do it for you, but Linux is general > requires more intelligence than 95/98 at present. As a result, you get > more flexibility; isapnp doesn't care where you stick your hardware, while > Windows will do everything it can to stop you manually allocating machine > resources. > > To me, Linux uses isapnp just like software setup of ethernet cards; it lets > me pick where to put hardware without changing jumpers, rather than allocating > it where it THINKS it fits. I agree pnpdump/isapnp is a snap to use once you get used to it, but it's pretty difficult at the start when you just want to get your sound card working. At the moment I think a little shell script which worked like xf86config or even the kernel "make config" would be a big improvement. Ie, it just seds the pnpdump file and gives you options: % pnpsetup Detected: "Creative Labs PnP Sound Chip" Use this device? (y/n) y What IO base? (220, 240, 260, 280, 2A0, 300) 280 What IRQ? (5, 7, 9, 10, 11) 10 Etc. With a little bit of smarts it could keep track of which irqs were already in use (and check /proc/pci to not overlap with non-isa pnp stuff) and warn of conflicts. This would be highly useful to a person who is perfectly familiar with setting up their sound blaster to run DOS games - a "computer person" without being a unix wizard, who is probably Linux's biggest potential target audience right now. I'd do it myself if I could program shell scripts worth a damn. Or does something like this already exist?