CONFLICT RESOLUTION USING SELF-CONTAINED "VIRTUAL" DEVICES

An apparatus and a method resolve conflicts arising from the addition of a new or unconfigured device to a computer system having one or more system resources. The computer system has one or more existing devices, wherein each of existing devices has an existing configuration. Additionally, each of existing or new/unconfigured devices has one or more acceptable configurations. The apparatus resolves conflict by attempting to fit the new/unconfigured device into the system resources and if a non-conflicting configuration is available from the acceptable configurations for the new/unconfigured device, setting the configuration of the new/unconfigured device to the non-conflicting configuration. However, in the event that a non-conflicting configuration cannot be located, the apparatus requests one of the existing devices to select another configuration from its acceptable configurations until a non-conflicting configuration is available for the first device. If the apparatus cannot adjust the configuration of existing devices to fit the new device, a failure occurs. Otherwise, the devices communicate amongst themselves to automatically arrive at an acceptable configuration for all devices.