Windows NT and PPBs

[John Keefe <keefe@mrt.magma.COM.>]

Hello all,

A customer of mine has one of our PXB-7 PCI Expansion Boxes and is having 
diffculty with Windows NT seeing his graphics cards behind PPBs. Indeed, 
just placing the host interface into his motherboard results in an error 
message:

   "device_mmap(); A device attached to the system is not functioning."

Even when there are no devices in the expansion box.

This is on a GXMT5200 system.

This smells like a BIOS problem. Is there something about Plug-n-Play 
that I can disable or enhance to make this work out? There was an ugly 
rumor re: "disable the Plug and Play OS BIOS switch, if the BIOS 
implements one, to determine if the software will recognize devices 
behind PPBs under Windows 95", but there is no such suggestion for 
Windows NT.

Any information about this particular system would be helpful. (A search 
of the MS knowledge base turned up nothing of any help.)

The PXB-7 works wonderfully with Alpha NT systems (as well as 
well-behaved PCs running Windows 3.1, DOS, Win 95, and Win NT) -- with 
the sole caveat being that the BIOS must support PPBs.

We have found in our testing that most manufacturers are building in 
PPB-aware BIOSes, but some "system integrators" are sadly lagging behind.

Along these same lines: Has the PCI tests been updated to include Windows 
NT or Windows 95? (If anybody is working on this, or have a version in 
hand, please let me know.)

Thanks, and Merry Christmas,

/john

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John M. Keefe, Jr.                PCI Expansion Box Prod Mgr
Mesa Ridge Technologies -- MAGMA    email: keefe@magma.com
6725 Mesa Ridge Road #100           Tel:   (619)457-0750
San Diego, CA 92121                 FAX:   (619)457-0798
Have you seen our Web page yet? URL: <http://www.magma.com>
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±TD