Host adapters vary in terms of the methods that are used for configuring them. Older
and cheaper cards, particularly ones that use the ISA bus to connect to the PC, typically
require the use of hardware jumpers for configuration tasks such as setting the SCSI
device ID for the host adapter, enabling or disabling termination, and so on. These are
relatively inconvenient because making changes requires opening up the PC, and in some
cases, pulling out the card to tinker with it.
Newer cards, especially those that use the PCI bus, are generally configured through
software. This is done either using a separate configuration utility, or the built-in SCSI
BIOS, a hardware program that resides on a chip within the host adapter (much like the system BIOS in concept, but dedicated to the SCSI
card, not the system as a whole.) Some cards may use both. Some better cards may also
automatically configure certain options, such as termination, by detecting which
connectors are in use, for example.
These issues are discussed in more detail in the section on
configuration. Note that when I talk about configuration here I am speaking of
configuring the SCSI bus, not the host adapter itself; see this
page for more on that subject.
Next: Resource Usage
