Re: [linux-audio-dev] ISA Plug & Play support in kernel

Albert D. Cahalan (acahalan@cs.uml.edu)
Sat, 2 Jan 1999 07:47:17 -0500 (EST)


David Weinehall writes:
> On Sat, 2 Jan 1999, David Weinehall wrote:
>> On Sat, 2 Jan 1999, Albert D. Cahalan wrote:

>>> 6. This won't let us reallocate devices. If I have n IRQs available
>>> for the ISA bus and cards that need n+2 IRQs, I ought to be able
>>> to use all but 2 devices at the same time without deciding that
>>> 2 particular devices just won't ever function. The kernel needs
>>> to move IRQs as needed so that I can freely use my hardware.
>>
>> Or, of course like all intelligent busses, use shared IRQ's.
>>
>> Think MCA, PCI (?)...
>
> And to answer my own post, I didn't mean that ISA should use shared IRQ's,
> because it's too stupid to do this... Get a better bus or accept fixed
> _IRQ's, is my opinion. We might well try to explain this to the users, but
> we shouldn't adhere to Micro$oftish beaviour "well, stability isn't
> important as long as people can use cheap hardware on our system"...

Any reason we can't have both?

Obviously you can't just rip an IRQ away from a SCSI card with a
live request. Drivers could provide a function to negotiate with
the rest of the kernel. If a driver needs to keep an IRQ or does
not implement a negotiation function, the IRQ can't change.

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