On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 12:28:24PM +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> Mark Brown wrote:

> > It was because they aren't automatically probeable without loading the
> > driver and taking a look at the hardware - if a distro wants to use them
> > it ends up having to load and unload the module.

> So he was grumbling about ISA sound card hardware design?  Then I
> understand and agree well.  Though, the fact that it isn't
> discoverable is same on many old embedded device drivers.  The
> difference is whether it's used only in a custom kernel or in a
> generic kernel by distros.

Any embedded devices doing that are just broken - for embedded things
you do always have an enumeration of the devices even if it happens to
come from a data table in software.  For ISA there's no option.