Why Was Plug-And-Play Such A Revolution For IT In Business?

Every business relies on a robust, reliable and easy-to-use IT system, and achieving this requires a complete strategy consisting of hardware deployment, software installation, threat management and consistent technical support.

The development of computer technology on a holistic level is primarily focused on making it as easy as possible for everyone, from technical support managers to end users, to understand and use the most effective technology to enable their businesses to thrive.

One of the biggest revolutions in this regard is also one of the most innocuous, but its development over a decade allowed everyone, not just hobbyists and businesses large enough to pay for the technology required.

This was the legacy of plug-and-play (PnP), and it subtly changed everything.

What Is Plug And Play?

The concept of plug-and-play is as simple in concept as it was difficult in execution. A plug-and-play device is one that can be plugged into a computer and be automatically recognised by the operating system without the need for additional hardware or software tweaking.

This can include internal hardware such as graphics cards, network devices and RAM, but also external hardware such as pen drives, smartphones, graphics tablets and anything that is plugged in using the Universal Serial Bus (USB).

Plug-and-play is the reason why a mouse plugged into a laptop will work almost immediately; Windows recognises that the device has been plugged in, looks for the relevant device signature and installs the drivers needed to make it work.

Where Did The Concept Come From?

Whilst the term PnP is primarily associated with Microsoft Windows, particularly Windows 95, the concept existed for over a decade before this.

As computers started to get small enough and cheap enough to become affordable to everyone, not just multinational corporations, a problem quickly emerged where people wanted to upgrade their existing computers but were reluctant to cut wires and solder components together.

This led to computer configurations being set up using DIP switches or jumpers, with certain combinations of switches allowing for certain pieces of hardware to be used.

This began to change with the release of the MSX in 1983 by ASCII Corporation and Microsoft. Developed by ASCII director Kazuhiko Nishi as a unified standard for home computers, the MSX was very popular in Japan, although its limited impact in North America and Europe meant that its innovations were not widely appreciated.

It was designed from the ground up to have plug-and-play support, allowing manufacturers to use very cheap chips to produce MSX-compatible computer systems capable of running unified software and hardware.

In the USA, similar initiatives such as NuBus for Apple Macintosh and Zorro/Autoconfig for the Commodore Amiga line were limited to their respective product families, as did IBM’s Micro Channel Architecture.

How Did Plug-And-Play Change Everything?

Ultimately, Microsoft Windows 95 was the first to consistently attempt to recognise and support every system component it was compatible with, avoiding the many issues Windows 3.1 users had with having to mess with jumpers and driver disks in order to install a lot of ISA and PCI cards.

This began to make computers much friendlier to use, and though there were still issues with reliability, Windows 95’s PnP system made businesses much more confident in relying on computer hardware, something that would only improve in subsequent generations.