Preferences

Devices (Intel Only)

The Devices preference lets you add, configure, and disable hardware devices. The Devices panel lists all hardware devices (modems, various cards, mouse, keyboard, etc.) on your computer.

In addition to using the Devices scrolling window to see what devices you have, you can highlight a device, click Configure, and go to the Info tab of the panel that opens for basic information about the device. This includes whether or not it's enabled, the type of device it is, which bus it's on (ISA or PCI), whether or not a resources conflict exists, and so on.

The information you see in Devices is not always reliable--devices sometimes appear to be enabled when they're not. If you have a device that shows up in the list as enabled, but that isn't working, check "Troubleshooting Device Configuration Problems" below.

Configuring Devices

All devices have system resources associated with them. These resources are IRQs (interrupt requests), DMAs (direct memory access), I/O ports, and memory. Devices cannot generally share resources (with the exception of PCI devices, which can share IRQs with each other). When you boot, your system's configuration manager configures all the devices in or attached to your computer so they don't conflict with each other; that is, they don't try to share each other's resources.

Sometimes the configuration manager doesn't manage things successfully, and one or more devices on your system will either turn up as disabled (you'll know it's disabled because it appears in red in the devices list) or just won't work. There are several reasons why this typically occurs:

There are more devices on your system than it has resources to support (i.e., there's a resource conflict).
There's an unknown device (or devices) on the system.
The configuration manager isn't smart enough to figure out the device configuration.

Identifying Resource Conflicts

Resource conflicts should occur only between ISA and plug and play devices. There are two perspectives from which to view such conflicts when they occur--from the point of view of the device or from the point of view of the resource:

To identify the conflict by way of the device, double-click on the disabled device in the Devices scrolling list to pop open a device resources and info window.
Toggle open the Resources Conflicts section of the window (at the bottom) to see which resources are in conflict.
To identify the conflict by way of the resource, select Devices > Resource Usage (Alt+U). The Resource Usage window opens at the IRQ tab with the devices that are in conflict showing in red.

The troubleshooting section that follows tells you how to deal with some device configuration problems you might run into.

Troubleshooting Device Configuration Problems

Missing driver.

If a device shows up as enabled in the Devices list but is not working, the problem may be that you don't have a driver for it. This is often the case with sound card failure.

Resource conflict--more devices on the system than it has resources to handle.

If something's not working and you've checked that it's connected properly, open Devices to see if it's disabled. The usual reason a device is disabled is because of a resource conflict. If the disabled device is one you want to use, you'll need to disable another device, or reconfigure the disabled device or the conflicting device, to free up resources for it. You can disable serial and parallel port devices in the BIOS (how you do this is different for every BIOS, so check your computer user guide for specifics). To disable a plug and play device, highlight it in the devices list (under ISA/Plug and Play Devices) and double-click on it. In the resources and info panel that appears, click theCurrent Configuration button in the upper-left of the Resources tab. If the device is one that can be disabled, Disable Device will be active and you can click it to do the job.

It's also possible that a device that's not working (the mouse won't move, the keyboard doesn't work) won't show up as disabled on the Devices list. This may also be a resource conflict. Try disabling other devices to free up resources and see if that fixes the problem.

Unknown device.

If you have any jumpered devices (ISA, non-plug and play cards; generally, older devices) on your system, it may not be able to recognize them. Do you have an old modem, sound card, or Ethernet card? If so, you must tell your configuration manager about it in Devices preferences. For all unknown devices other than internal modems, go to Devices > Add Jumpered Device > Custom and fill in the panel that asks you for information about the device. (You'll need to get this information from the guide that came with the device.) If you don't know all the resources a device uses, just fill in the ones you do know.

If the unknown device is an internal modem, go to Devices > Add Jumpered Device > Modem and select a serial port from the popup in the configuration panel that appears. You may have to tweak the settings used for the modem, particularly the IRQ. If you want to do that, double-click on the new jumpered device and change the settings manually.

Just as with resource conflicts, if a device doesn't show up in red in the Devices list but isn't working, it may be in conflict with a jumpered device. In that case, choose Devices > Add Jumpered Device > Custom and create a new device in the panel that appears, then reboot.

Not-so-smart configuration manager.

If the device doesn't appear in red in the Devices list, and probably is not a jumpered device, it may not be working because it incorrectly believes that it can use a certain resource (probably, but not always, an IRQ). To test this, force the device to use a different IRQ. There are two ways to do this:

Create a jumpered device that uses that particular resource with Devices > Add Jumpered Device > Custom and reboot to make it take effect.
Explicitly set the device's configuration by clicking the Configure... button and entering configuration information in the Resources tab of the panel that appears; reboot to make your changes take effect.

You can also try to see if there's any way to use all devices without having to disable any of them. Choose Devices > Resource Usage (Alt+U) to see what resources all your devices are using, then highlight a device, click the Configure... button to bring up its configuration information, and see if you can reconfigure the device to fit by hand. If this doesn't work, you'll have to decide which devices you need less and disable them while you're working in BeOS.

There aren't enough IRQs for all your plug and play devices.

Try setting the Plug and Play OS to "no" in your computer's BIOS settings--if it's there. To find out how to get into your computer's BIOS, read the user guide that came with it.

Adding Devices

In general, you should only need to add jumpered devices to your system. These are older, ISA-based cards that your system's configuration manager cannot recognize. Your config manager should automatically configure any newer, PCI-based hardware.

To add a jumpered device:

Get the following information from the user guide that came with the device: IRQ, DMA, I/O range, and memory range. You must have all of this information before you can proceed.
Choose Devices > Add Jumpered Device > Custom to bring up the an Untitled Device panel. If the jumpered device is an internal modem (external "plug and play" modems are automatically detected by the system--you don't have to specifically add them), choose Devices > Add Jumpered Device > Modem. In the small configuration panel that appears, select a port for the internal modem from the popup, and click Add.
For devices other than internal modems type a name (preferably the specific name of the device) in the Device Name field of the Untitled Device window; this name appears in the panel's yellow tab as you type it.
Select the type of jumpered device in the Device Type popup.
Check the IRQ and DMA setting according to the information in your device's user guide.
To set IO Port Ranges, click the Add button. In the box that pops up, type in (or use the up/down arrow buttons) the IO port range information for your device. You can add as many devices as you want, but you must add each one separately, returning to Devices > Add Jumpered Device as often as you need to.
Click the Add button in the Memory Ranges section and enter the appropriate information in the box that pops up, then click Done to return to the new device window.

You can add multiple IO port ranges and memory ranges to a single device, but you have to add them one at a time, clicking Add again to bring up the range entry box as often as you need to.

Reboot your computer. If it hangs, see "Troubleshooting Jumpered Devices," below.

Troubleshooting Jumpered Devices

If your computer hangs on reboot after you've added a jumpered device, reboot in "safe" mode:

Reboot, and when the BeOS splash screen appears, press the spacebar briefly and wait for the Boot Loader screen to come up.
Use the arrow keys to highlightSelect safe mode options and press Enter, then press Enter again to select Safe mode. Arrow down to Return to main menu and press Enter, then choose Continue booting and press Enter again. The system boots in fail-safe video mode, with a grayscale screen.

Alternatively--without going into "safe" mode--you can edit the jumpered device's settings by clicking the Configure... button and changing the settings in the Resources tab in the resource and info window. You can also delete the device by highlighting it in the Devices window scrolling list and choosing Devices > Delete Jumpered Device.