On 2020-05-10 10:52 PM, Karen Lewellen wrote:
Is the BIOS still used for that sort of thing? I got the impression they gave up on it years ago, as it was so inadequate. That is a fine question. My computers are built for me, interestingly enough by a former IBM staffer who now works for amd. I am embarrassed to say that I did not ask once I started using my USB ports in DOS. what motivated my question was my thinking, perhaps wrongly, that there would be a bios setting for USB hardware ports the way there is / was for other things.
We had to worry about COM ports, back in the XT/AT days, but I don't recall seeing them in years. Even in the DOS days, developers wrote their own drivers, because the BIOS & DOS ones were so bad. We also had to worry about IRQ lines back then because of the stupid way IBM used them. I just checked my ThinkPad and the only items about USB are for enabling UEFI support and USB charging.