Re: [Etherboot-developers] DHCP option 175

[<ebi...@ln...>]

Michael Brown <mb...@fe...> writes:

> 
> So is it something that would need to be individually coded into each ISA
> driver, or something that could be coded just once?  

You could do it in one pass but you would have to add it to each driver.
There is no good way for software to identify ISA devices.  And various
tricks are required.

> This is probably a
> stupid question, but I just don't know if the vendor name and part number
> are well-defined fields in the same way as the PCI vendor and device ID
> fields - I never really got into ISA hardware.

They are only well defined in that is what you order the part by.  And
how you look up the parts documentation.  For every bus that came after
ISA; PnPISA, MCA, PCI, USB, ... There are well defined fields you can use
But there is nothing on the software side for ISA.  

We could assign random arbitrary strings.  But strings that make sense
in some other context are probably better because someone can look at
it and make sense of it.  And also be able to predict with some degree
of accuracy what other ISA chips will have.

Eric