Plug and Play Technology

Plug and Play Technology

Plug and Play is an ISA technology designed to make expanding the server easier. Plug and Play adapter support is built into the system board in the server. If the operating system supports Plug and Play technology, the server will automatically configure itself when you install an ISA Plug and Play device.

Note: PCI adapters are also often referred to as plug and play because they configure automatically.

Plug and Play Adapters: Plug and Play adapters are easier to install and set up because they are auto-configuring. This means that there are no jumpers or switches to set.

A Plug and Play adapter comes with built-in identification and configuration specifications (set in memory on the adapter) that provide installation information to the server during startup. This information is read by the input/output (I/O) bus and interpreted by the server BIOS. The BIOS routines automatically configure the adapter around the resources already in use by other devices.

Legacy Adapters: If an adapter that you install is not Plug and Play compatible, the Configuration/Setup Utility Program can help you to manually configure the adapter. Adapters that are not Plug and Play compatible are known as legacy devices.

Configuration/Setup Utility Program: Within the Configuration/Setup utility program, the Plug and Play screen displays server resources that are typically required by adapters:

I/O port address
Memory address
IRQ line
DMA channel

From the Configuration/Setup utility program screens, you can select available resources for the adapter that you are installing. Resources that are not currently being used by adapters that are already installed in the server are listed as [ISA Legacy]. The system resources that are in use by other devices are listed as [Not Applicable].

Note:

Refer to the documentation that comes with the adapter for information about required system resources. Then, make the appropriate jumper or switch settings on the adapter.
If you have a resource conflict, set the resources that are used by the ISA legacy adapter to [ISA Legacy]. This will manually configure the ISA legacy adapter to that specific server resource. Once Plug and Play detects that a resource is not available, it will skip that resource, and reconfigure to other available system resources. (See 'Plug and Play'.)

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