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plug-and-play_or_pnp

Plug and Play is at best a hopeful name. Long time industry people renamed the term to Plug and Pray. (it seems there were many clergy involved in the original development.) PnP is the acronym (there is always an acronym…) that also has a counterpart, TnT, indicating how unstable the early PnP cards really were. Since R2 of W95, things have been better. W2000 was supposed to really have a grip of sorts on PnP with an entire section of System devoted to it. The theory is that OS and card, working together, have the ability within a computer system to automatically configure expansion boards and other devices. You should be able to plug in a device and play with it, without worrying about setting DIP switches, jumpers, and other configuration elements. Since the introduction of the NuBus, the Apple Macintosh has been a plug-and-play computer. The players involved and the varied options are limited by Apple's resistance to sharing technology. The Plug and Play (PnP) specification has made PCs more plug-and-play, although it doesn't always work as advertised.

plug-and-play_or_pnp.txt · Last modified: 2011/09/16 23:48 by dougster