LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Hardware and Architecture

Objective 1: Configure Fundamental BIOS Settings

PC BIOS

• The BIOS is the PC's firmware.

• The BIOS sets date and time for on-board clock, storage device configuration, and so on via menus.

Resource assignments

• Interrupts (IRQs) allow peripherals to interrupt the CPU.

• I/O addresses are locations in the processor's memory map for hardware devices.

• DMA allows certain devices to work directly with memory, freeing the processor (see Table 10-1).

Table 10-1. Common device settings

Device	I/O address	IRQ	DMA
ttyS0 (COM1)	3f8	4	NA
ttyS1 (COM2)	2f8	3	NA
ttyS2 (COM3)	3e8	4	NA
ttyS3 (COM4)	2e8	3	NA
lp0 (LPT1)	378-37f	7	NA
lp1 (LPT2)	278-27f	5	NA
fd0, fd1 (floppies 1 and 2)	3f0-3f7	6	2
fd2, fd3 (floppies 3 and 4)	370–377	10	3

1024-cylinder limit

• LILO and the kernel image should be kept within the first 1024 cylinders on hard disks.

Objective 3: Configure Modems and Sound Cards

Modems

• Modems are serial devices. Some are external and are attached to a serial port. Others are installed in a computer and include serial port electronics on-board.

• Some modems are produced at reduced cost by implementing portions of their functionality in Windows software libraries. These so-called "winmodems" aren't compatible with Linux without add-on drivers.

Sound devices

• PCI sound cards and most ISA PnP cards under 2.4.x kernels are automatically configured when the card's driver is loaded.

• When the old userspace ISA PnP tools are used, pnpdump output is stored for use ...