Plug-n-Play for vintage machines?

On 11 Nov 2008 at 14:14, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: I've got a lot of old cards with the Xicor X2444 NVRAM chips for configuration (mostly NICs). While they're kind of neat in that boards have no jumpers, they're also dangerous even if you managed to hold on to the configuration utility. ISTR that the Intel Aboveboard could be put into such a state that the host system would not boot successfully. Fortunately, the X2444 is in a socket and you can simply pull it to get the system booted, then re-insert it and configure the board correctly (assuming you have the configuration utility). On the other hand, a board with jumpers or switches need only be fiddled with to get it working. Even with 8 DIP switches, that's only 256 combinations. A small suggestion is that if you use DIP switches or jumpers, please eliminate those states where the settings make no sense. I hope we've progressed past the point of stuff such as "If SW6 is set on, then SW1 must be set off and SW3 must be set on; otherwise SW1 must be set on and the setting of SW3 depends on the setting of SW4-5 (see table 5-13)". Cheers, Chuck