BIOS, Serial, Parrellel, ISA, Firewire..

The Plug and Play BIOS Specification v1.0a


"This Plug and Play BIOS Specification defines new functionality to be provided in a PC compatible system BIOS to fulfill the goals of Plug and Play. To achieve these goals, several new components have been added to the System BIOS. Two key areas that are addressed by the System BIOS are resource management and runtime configuration.

Resource management provides the ability to manage the fundamental system resources which include DMA, Interrupt Request Lines (IRQs), I/O and Memory addresses. These resources, termed system resources, are in high demand and commonly are over-allocated or allocated in a conflicting manner in ISA systems, leading to bootstrap and system configuration failures. A plug and play system BIOS will play a vital role in helping to manage these resources and ensure a successful launch of the operating system."

Plug and Play ISA Specification v1.0a


"This specification presents a mechanism to provide automatic configuration capability to Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) cards thus enabling full Plug and Play in the PC. The essential elements of Plug and Play ISA are:

• Isolate the ISA card
• Read the card's resource data
• Identify the card and configure its resources
• Locate a driver for the card

The mechanism has the flexibility to allow cards to come up either inactive or active. Cards required to participate in the boot process typically come up active. Information that identifies the card and describes the system resources which are requested by the card, such as memory and I/O space, DMA channel, and interrupt level supported is maintained in a standard read-only format. This allows the Plug and Play software to identify system resource usage, arbitrate conflicts, and, optionally, re-configure a card. This process is done automatically at every hard reset of the system. Plug and Play ISA cards will inter-operate with standard ISA cards in a fully compatible manner.

Possible BIOS extensions required to support Plug and Play ISA cards are also discussed in this specification. However, user interface issues for installation of device drivers are not addressed." Also available is an Clarification on the spec.

Plug and Play Parellel Specification v1.0b


"This document outlines the minimum hardware & software requirements for parallel port devices to obtain "Plug & Play" support under Chicago. "Plug & Play" (in this document) is defined as the ability to attach an I/O device to a host, and enable the host to determine that the device has been added, identify it, and either automatically install the necessary device drivers or prompt the user for a diskette containing them. This document is not intended to provide a complete, detailed description of how an operating system will internally accomplish this, but rather to define the necessary hardware/software requirements."

Plug and Play External COM Device Specification v1.00


"This specification presents a mechanism to provide automatic configuration capability to peripheral devices that connect to a PC using Asynchronous Serial Data Interchange on standard serial ports, commonly known as COM ports. This enables full Plug and Play for the PC system, including external serial peripherals, referred to here as COM Devices."

Plug and Play Firewire Specification v1.0b


"This specification is a design reference to aid consistent implementation and ensure interoperability of devices compliant with IEEE 1394-1995. The intent of this specification is to simplify device development through clarification of the requirements for devices and systems under the Microsoft® Windows NT®version 5.0 and Windows® 98 operating systems.

Design references span a range of topics including IEEE 1394 advances, device Configuration ROM, speed-independent and power-independent connectors and cabling, and Plug and Play details related to IEEE 1394 power specifications. This specification also outlines requirements for interoperability testing and provides guidelines for application of cable power."

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