PNPBIOS(4) Kernel Interfaces Manual (i386) PNPBIOS(4)

NAME

pnpbiosintroduction to PnP BIOS support

SYNOPSIS

pnpbios0 at mainbus?
XX* at pnpbios0 index ?


options PNPBIOSVERBOSE
options PNPBIOSDEBUG

INTRODUCTION

pnpbios provides support for finding and attaching devices by extracting information from the PnP BIOS of a machine.

SUPPORTED DEVICES

NetBSD includes the following pnpbios drivers, sorted by driver name:

com
serial communications interface
ess
ESS Technology AudioDrive family audio device driver
fdc
floppy controller
joy
game controller
lpt
parallel port driver
npx
math coprocessor
pciide
PCI IDE controllers driver
pckbc
PC keyboard/mouse controller
sb
SoundBlaster family audio device driver
wss
Windows Sound System hardware driver
ym
Yamaha OPL3-SA3 sound driver

SEE ALSO

com(4), ess(4), fdc(4), intro(4), isa(4), joy(4), lpt(4), npx(4), pci(4), pciide(4), pckbc(4), sb(4), wss(4), ym(4)

HISTORY

The pnpbios driver appeared in NetBSD 1.5.

BUGS

The pnpbios bus provides a different way to attach devices than the real buses (e.g., isa(4)). The reason to use pnpbios instead of the real bus is that some machines have weird routings of, e.g., interrupts. The exact information about these things can be found in the BIOS, which is why the pnpbios bus has a better chance of succeeding with getting it right.

Many older BIOS implementations do not support PnP, and some newer ones do not follow the standards.

September 27, 2002 NetBSD 6.1