Simpler Times
- by Simon Moon
Does anyone else out there long for the simpler days where you needed to move a jumper in the jumper block to set your modem card to use IRQ7 so it would not conflict with the interrupts used by other boards in your PC and your modem card came with a 78 page manual telling you everything you would need to know to write your own driver for the board including a full schematic along with the board layout showing every chip, capacitor, and resistor? Ahhhhh, the simplicity!I am wrestling with UserPnp issues for a USB software licensing dongle that is needed by some third party software in one of our production applications. Of course, every machine in production is virtual, so it could be anything in the chain of the software application library to the device driver running on the VM to the configuration of the simulated USB port to the implementation of the USB connection and transport in the virtual host to the physical electrical connections in the USB port on the hypervisor.If only there were the virtual analog to a set of needle-nose pliers to move a virtual jumper.Come to think of it, I always used to drop those damn things such that they would land in an irretrievable position under the motherboard anyway.