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Unfortunately, I haven't really existed for long enough to know how computers functioned before PnP and the PCI stuff existed. According to various googles, hardware had to be manually physically "configured" with jumpers and switches and plugboards.

What does this even mean? What had to be "configured". I can barely imagine anything you would have to configure with a keyboard or mouse, although they had their own ports. Maybe like a hardware toaster: you would have to take a bunch of wires and connect them to the begin toasting/eject food parts of a toaster, and connect those to a computer. Then, would you do something like moving jumpers to redirect some bit into the eject wire, so you could write to that bit and have bread pop out?

Can someone who experienced that stuff give me an example of a full session of manually installing a device, like a 4-button mouse with a light that glows when the mouse is connected?

user1319644
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This question is really wide, so I'm voting to close it even though I'll take a quick trip down memory lane with you.

Things like keyboards did not need configuration, they just plugged in. Things like hard drives required jumpers to tell whether they were the primary or slave hard drive. [ The jumpers were on the drive ]. Things like serial ports would often have dip switches to set the serial port and IRQ - think of something which looks like an IC with a number of tiny white switches on it.

Mice did not really exist - to the extent they did, they just plugged into the serial port - of-course the serial port needed to be configured as above.

The software side of things is as important as the hardware. Things which used the serial port - eg modem and mouse could typically be configured on 1 of 4 ports. The software also needed to be told which port the device was on.

davidgo
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    Sound cards needed messy IRQ, DMA, and I/O address configuration, that I remember... – bwDraco Jan 01 '15 at 00:42
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    I forget how much fun it was to figure out why my serial mouse stopped working after installing a modem. – I say Reinstate Monica Jan 01 '15 at 01:21
  • Don't remember using serial mice. I've worked with PS/2 and they were plug-and-play, although not hot-swappable the way USB peripherals are (see http://superuser.com/questions/172420/is-it-safe-to-hot-swap-a-ps-2-keyboard). First experience with a PC was Windows 95. Much of my early experience working with computers was with Windows 98 and Me. – bwDraco Jan 01 '15 at 02:20
  • @Twisty: I think that was an [IRQ conflict](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrupt_request_%28PC_architecture%29#Conflicts). Even with today's age of hot-pluggable, auto-installing hardware, I still have to deal with driver conflicts. Last time I dealt with a conflict was between the Wacom tablet driver and Microsoft IntelliPoint. – bwDraco Jan 01 '15 at 02:25
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    A variety of consumer external devices started becoming available around the IBM XT era. Plug and play came into existence I think with Win XP. Prior to that, everything came with its own proprietary driver on a floppy (and later CD), which had to be installed before the hardware would be recognized. There was no such thing as a generic driver. Every brand and model of external device of any kind (except for standard keyboards and perhaps a standard mouse), needed its own manufacturer-supplied driver. – fixer1234 Jan 01 '15 at 02:54
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    "Plug and Pray" was in full swing with Windows 95, with efforts toward automatic configuration even before that. It wasn't as automatic then as it is now (hence the "Pray"), but things like ISA modems started supporting a PnP mode that would enable the BIOS and OS to cooperate to auto-select settings like IRQ, I/O address, DMA channel, etc. But when it didn't work (like the IRQ conflicts @DragonLord mentions), getting things working was a chore. – I say Reinstate Monica Jan 01 '15 at 03:18
  • I'm so glad I never used PCs before Win2k - my memory of them through the 90s was of them always having the side off, & some guy fiddling with jumpers trying to get things to work. I will always remember the look on his face when I took the HD out of my old Mac, put it in my new Mac & it just booted, no fiddling required ;) – Tetsujin Jan 01 '15 at 10:24