what is "plug & play" bios

[thehardwarehacker]

i know some of the various kinds of BIOS: AMI, efi, uefi, but what i dont know what 'plug & play' bios is. its under the bios info of a motherb oard in looking at, but know know what it is. thanks in advance.

 

[Eximo]

Really only two kinds of contemporary BIOS for PCs. BIOS and UEFI. Plenty of brands, but that is the basic type.

Plug and Play refers to a technology where details of the device are stored on the device itself. This gets reported the BIOS and then it sets its own IRQ and DMA settings. This has been the standard for 15 years at least.

Prior to this you had to physically set jumpers on motherboards and add in cards. Then you had to match these settings during setup on dependent applications. (Most commonly selecting the proper IRQ and DMA for game sound setup)