PnP = Plug-and-Play
Unfortunately this has come to mean Microsoft/Windows95/x86 :-(
It doesn't though! It means plug it in and forget it.
ALL devices can be PnP to some extent. I already have a skeleton
for the support of: PnP BIOS, PnP ISA, ISA, EISA, PCI, PCMCIA, MCA,
and legacy (non-PnP) systemboard devices. Yes, I'm still catering
to x86 devices, as they are the only ones that are really mucked up
to the point of absurdity.
My hopes is that one day there will be a fully modular kernel,
with one set of boot/root disks for everyone. Of course, being
a hater of PnP, everything will be manually configurable too.
I invite everyone with spare time (ya, right) to look at the
PnP code, and start hacking. I can't possibly do all that is
required on my own, in any reasonable amount of time at least.
I've attempted to make a framework for all other code that is
not dependent on any other code (example: PnP BIOS works the same
as PCI from the view of the kernel).
A patch for kernel v2.0.0 (pnp-patch.10.gz) is available from the
PnP web pages. It doesn't do much of anything yet (it is completely
harmless), but _does_ add some new and improved features to the
kernel (like address space management).
Peter Fox has done a _wonderful_ job developing the 'isapnptools'
package. It will get ISA-PnP devices going with existing kernels.
The package is mirrored on the PnP 3rd Party Utilities web page.
-- Andrew E. Mileski mailto:aem@ott.hookup.net My home page http://www.redhat.com/~aem/ Linux Plug-and-Play Project Leader. See URL http://www.redhat.com/pnp/Red Hat Software sponsors these pages - I have no other affilitation with Red Hat Software, and I have never used any of their products.