Well, it's been several days and no one has reported
any problems with the PnP BIOS driver.
The driver is available as a patch:
http://panopticon.csustan.edu/thood/pnpbios.patch_latest
The patch is against 2.4.17-pre4 but it applies successfully
to any kernel between 2.4.16 and 2.4.17-pre8.
If I don't get any complaints about the driver in the next
week or so, I'll submit it to the maintainers.
--
Thomas Hood