Quatech RS-232 - Manual (Page 29)

6 Other Operating Systems
Device drivers for Windows NT and OS/2 are also available for
the ESC(LP)-100. The board can be used under DOS and other operating
systems as well in many circumstances. The software described below can
be downloaded from the Quatech web site if it did not come with the
board.
6.1 Windows NT
The Windows NT device driver is installed by running the SETUP
program. Up to 256 serial ports are supported. There is a command
line-based configuration utility which is used for adding PCI bus and ISA
bus serial ports. Please refer to the documentation included with the
device driver for full installation and configuration details.
6.2 OS/2
The OS/2 device driver supports up to 32 serial ports in a system.
Installation is a manual, but simple, process. Please refer to the
documentation included with the device driver for full installation and
configuration details.
6.3 DOS and other operating systems
The ESC(LP)-100 is not a direct drop-in replacement for a legacy
serial port because its base address and IRQ cannot be fixed at values
such as 3F8 hex, IRQ 4 (COM1) or 2F8 hex, IRQ 3 (COM2), etc. Rather, the
system BIOS assigns the address and the IRQ in a plug-and-play fashion
at boot time. Software which is to use the ESC(LP)-100 must be able to
accommodate any valid assignments of these resources.
For Windows 95/98/2000/ME, Windows NT and OS/2, the
Quatech device drivers determine what the resource assignments are and
proceed accordingly. In other cases, however, the user must intervene.
The discussion below will center on DOS, but the concepts can be applied
to other operating systems as well.
Many DOS applications support user configuration of the base
address and IRQ of a serial port. Such applications can generally make
use of the ESC(LP)-100. Older applications, as well as some custom
software, may use hard-coded standard legacy serial port addresses.
These applications will require modifications if they are to use the
ESC(LP)-100.
Custom applications for which the customer has source code can be
modified to make just a few PCI BIOS function calls to obtain all the
ESC(LP)-100 User's Manual 23