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SubjectRe: Hard coding default COM3/4 IRQ.
On Mon, 31 May 1999, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:

>What I found is that by assuming that the default IRQ 3 and 4 are used,
>I got *much* less e-mail complaints. Those who are using their own
>custom hardware in general are smart enough to figure out how to fix it
>on their own --- and the amount of requests of assistance from less
>experienced folks who are using the cheapest hardware they could find
>went a down a lot; these folks win by using the IRQ 3/4 default
>settings, and their cheap hardware would have lost if we tried to
>autodetect their IRQ and fail.

I'm sure that everything you've stated is correct, with respect
to chips that aren't "as advertised" - however, I've installed
Windows 95 on a heck of a lot of machines, as well as Win98, and
I've not yet ever seen it get the modem IRQ wrong. That doesn't
say that it doesn't - it is just rare if ever (which is a miracle
for win95). On most of the machines that I get my hands on, the
modem goes on COM3/IRQ2, because I've yet to have any major
conflicts statistically speaking.

Therefore, my theory is that it can be done, and done at least as
good as W95 (even if it means reverse engineering _gulp_ windows
95's autodetection routines).

Linux should not force the user to do things that other OS's can
demonstrably autoconfigure with little or no problems. I like
the compile time option of autoconfigure serial that is in 2.2.x.
I haven't tested it yet, but if it breaks on some machines, then
it just needs some more work until it gets set properly. IMHO,
this will only happen if people test it, and report failures,
along with their complete system configuration, and chipset info,
etc..

At any rate, keep up the good work, and lets hope for a rock
solid Windows killing 2.4.0 within a year.

Take care!
TTYL


--
Mike A. Harris Linux advocate GNU advocate
Computer Consultant Open Source advocate

Tea, Earl Grey, Hot...


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