DEVELOPING PLUG AND PLAY COM PORTS USING TI PLUG AND PLAY CONTROLLERS

The installation and configuration of a system can be a major problem for the user, as a result of the wide variety of different plug-in boards and computer systems which are in use. The ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) bus is a widely used standard in the PC industry. The ISA bus architecture requires the allocation of resources. These include the I/O address space, a memory address space, the DMA channel and the Interrupt channel, for every ISA plug-in card which is used. However, the ISA standard does not provide any definite hard or software controlled mechanism for allocating the card characteristics. The configuration of each card is usually performed with the help of jumpers or DIL switches. Reference must be made to the documentation of the card manufacturer, in order to avoid conflicts with other ISA cards. For the user this configuration can be a time-consuming and frustrating process.

The definition of the Plug-and-Play ISA standard now makes it possible to develop plug-in cards having full ISA bus compatibility, which will be configured completely automatically by the system. This spares the user every kind of adjustment, such as inserting jumpers or setting DIL switches. A system containing only ISA Plug-and-Play cards can thus be recognized and configured completely automatically, without any kind of intervention by the user. In addition to the logic circuitry which is to be found on the Plug-and-Play compatible ISA card, a program is needed which will automatically configure the card in the PC.

Texas Instruments supplies Plug-and-Play controllers, which allow the development of Plug-and-Play compatible ISA cards. This Applications Report discusses in detail the development of a Plug-and-Play Windows 95 compatible serial interface (COM port), based on the TL16C550.

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