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Date: 04 Jan 2002 17:30:00 +0200
From: kaih@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen)
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.1020103100747.4554A-100000@chaos.analogic.com>
Subject: Re: ISA slot detection on PCI systems?
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root@chaos.analogic.com (Richard B. Johnson)  wrote on 03.01.02 in <Pine.LNX.3.95.1020103100747.4554A-100000@chaos.analogic.com>:

> ISA has nothing. Just fixed port addressing where an attempt
> is made to find out something about the hardware by writing
> and reading the results. If you think you have device 'A'
> at port N, but you don't, and you write something to condition
> device 'A' for a response, you could, in fact, tell another
> device to hit the reset switch or, worse, format your disk(s).

Best-known example is probably trying to autodetect anything but a NE2000  
card before detecting the NE2000 card that's in the machine.

I've even seen BIOSes freeze in that situation. And yes, I do mean whole- 
machine-freeze. An NE2000 *really* doesn't like being touched the wrong  
way.


MfG Kai
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