HP Vectra VE 5/xx hp desktop pcs, plug and play for Microsoft Windows 2000 (Mi - Page 7

QGVBÃ6I9ÃQG6` PW@SWD@X A Plug and Play system requires the combined interaction of the personal computer's BIOS, hardware components, device drivers, and operating system software. The basic system board implementation and BIOS support required for Plug and Play support under Windows 2000 are defined in the ACPI specification. Both Windows 2000 and Windows 98 use this specification as the basis for their Plug and Play and OnNow architecture. The ACPI specification defines a new interface between the operating system and the personal computer's Plug and Play and power management features. The ACPI methods defined are independent of the actual operating system or CPU. ACPI specifies a register-level interface to core Plug and Play and power management functions and defines a descriptive interface for additional hardware features. This gives system designers the ability to implement a range of Plug and Play and power management features with different hardware designs while using the same operating-system driver. ACPI also provides a generic system-event mechanism for Plug and Play and power management. In addition to the ACPI specification, other hardware support is defined in industry standards, such as Universal Serial Bus, Version 1.0, PCI Local Bus Specification, Revision 2.1, or PCMCIA standards, and in the Plug and Play specifications. (See the References section at the end of this paper for locations of all specifications.) T’†‡r€ÃT s‚…ÃQyˆtÃhqÃQyh’ Windows 2000 provides the following support for Plug and Play: • Automatic and dynamic recognition of installed hardware. This includes initial system installation, recognition of Plug and Play hardware changes that occur between system boots, and response to run-time hardware events, such as dock or undock and device insertion or removal. • Hardware resource allocation (and reallocation). Drivers for Plug and Play devices do not assign their own resources. Instead, the required resources for a device are identified when the device is enumerated by the operating system. The Plug and Play Manager retrieves the requirements for each device during resource allocation. Based on the resource requests that each device makes, the Plug and Play Manager assigns the appropriate hardware resources, such as I/O ports, IRQs, DMA channels, and memory locations. The Plug and Play Manager reconfigures resource assignments when needed, such as when a device is added to the system, and requests resources that are already in use. • Loading of appropriate drivers. The Plug and Play Manager determines which drivers are required to support a particular device and loads those drivers. • An interface for driver interaction with the Plug and Play system. The interface consists primarily of I/O routines, Plug and Play I/O request packets (IRPs), required driver entry points, and information in the registry. • Interaction with power management. One of the key features of both Plug and Play and power management is dynamic handling of events. The addition Windows 2000 White Paper 3