What does plug and play mean?
Definitions for plug and play
plug and play
This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word plug and play.
Wiktionary
plug and playnoun
A feature that facilitates the discovery of a hardware component automatically, without the need for manual installation and configuration.
Wikipedia
Plug and play
In computing, a plug and play (PnP) device or computer bus is one with a specification that facilitates the recognition of a hardware component in a system without the need for physical device configuration or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts. The term "plug and play" has since been expanded to a wide variety of applications to which the same lack of user setup applies.Expansion devices are controlled and exchange data with the host system through defined memory or I/O space port addresses, direct memory access channels, interrupt request lines and other mechanisms, which must be uniquely associated with a particular device to operate. Some computers provided unique combinations of these resources to each slot of a motherboard or backplane. Other designs provided all resources to all slots, and each peripheral device had its own address decoding for the registers or memory blocks it needed to communicate with the host system. Since fixed assignments made expansion of a system difficult, devices used several manual methods for assigning addresses and other resources, such as hard-wired jumpers, pins that could be connected with wire or removable straps, or switches that could be set for particular addresses. As microprocessors made mass-market computers affordable, software configuration of I/O devices was advantageous to allow installation by non-specialist users. Early systems for software configuration of devices included the MSX standard, NuBus, Amiga Autoconfig, and IBM Microchannel. Initially all expansion cards for the IBM PC required physical selection of I/O configuration on the board with jumper straps or DIP switches, but increasingly ISA bus devices were arranged for software configuration. By 1995, Microsoft Windows included a comprehensive method of enumerating hardware at boot time and allocating resources, which was called the "Plug and Play" standard.Plug and play devices can have resources allocated at boot-time only, or may be hotplug systems such as USB and IEEE 1394 (FireWire).
Wikidata
Plug and play
In computing, a plug and play device or computer bus, is one with a specification that facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system without the need for physical device configuration or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts. Plug and play devices can be due to boot-time assignment of device resources and to hotplug systems such as USB and IEEE 1394.
Numerology
Chaldean Numerology
The numerical value of plug and play in Chaldean Numerology is: 7
Pythagorean Numerology
The numerical value of plug and play in Pythagorean Numerology is: 3
Examples of plug and play in a Sentence
Mexico has a lot of the key ingredients to succeed, but it's not plug and play.
Special Agent Kimberley Whittle:
It’s learning how to be more flexible, more adaptive, and to do more with the same amount of resources, it’s a plug-and-play concept. They all learn the same things in training so they can all work with each other.
Translations for plug and play
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"plug and play." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2025. Web. 19 Mar. 2025. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/plug+and+play>.
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