IBM RS/6000 - Manual (Page 123)

Chapter 6. Adapter and Device Configuration on PCI-Based
RS/6000 Servers
PCI-based RS/6000 systems include support for new buses, such as the Peripheral
Component Interconnect (PCI) and Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) as well as
new devices which are different than the ones that are supported on the
microchannel-based RS/6000 systems.
While the AIX system configuration architecture and methodology using the Object
Data Manager (ODM) database and information provided by System ROS has been
maintained, the configuration of devices which do not support automatic
configuration, for example non-native ISA devices, has to be performed in a
different way than when configuring microchannel devices.
The methods that are used by the AIX operating system to manage devices
include:
Device Nodes
Device Classes
Device Configuration Database
Device States
This chapter includes step-by-step procedures on how to configure devices on the
PCI-based RS/6000 servers and provides cable types and cabling information that
is necessary on most adapters.
6.1 Device Types
PCI-based RS/6000 servers support attachment of devices via the following buses:
SCSI
PCI
ISA
Devices on PCI-based RS/6000 systems might be of two types: native devices,
such as the integrated SCSI controller and the serial controller or attached
(non-native) devices, such as the supported PCI or ISA adapters.
The device information required to configure the integrated devices is contained in
the firmware and is passed to the operating system through the residual data
written to NVRAM. Thus, integrated devices are configured automatically to AIX
after system reboot.
Attached PCI devices and adapters can be configured automatically because the
PCI Local Bus Specification defines a configuration method for PCI components.
Provided that the device support software is installed, PCI and SCSI devices are
configured automatically whenever the Configuration Manager program, cfgmgr, is
run at system boot or run time and when no conflict (for example, the same SCSI
ID for two different SCSI devices) is found.
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