NEC POWERMATE VP Manual page 54

Plug and Play boards are industry-standard architecture
(ISA) boards with the new configuration capability. Most
currently available ISA boards do not have the new
capability. However, you can include them with Plug and
Play boards in your system.
To work in a system, boards often use a variety of
dedicated resources. If two boards try to use the same
resource, one board might not work or the system might
not function in the way you expect.
Generally, a resource can be used by only
one board or device. However, some boards can
share the same DMA or IRQ resources. The board
manufacturer's documentation tells you whether a
board supports shared resources.
If an ISA board does not support shared resources and a
Plug and Play board is not aware that the ISA board is
using the same resource it has selected, an ISA
Configuration Utility (ICU) is needed. The ICU is used to
eliminate the guess work from the configuration
procedure. Although most Plug and Play boards come with
an ICU, an ICU can be obtained from the NEC Bulletin
Board Service (see Chapter 2).
Plug and Play boards are dynamic in nature — the system
allocates resources to these boards upon system boot.
Some device drivers support this dynamic board configu-
ration, but some do not.
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