[GTALUG] Actual ttyS0 MIA

[James Knott]

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.