newbie: chipset detection

[MaikV]

I'm looking to dev yet another hobby OS and am sorely in need of some information.

Specifically, is there a standard way nowadays to detect what chipset the PC has? If the information can be obtained via some other encompassing spec such as PnP, I'd like to know what it is so that I have a good idea of where to start looking for the details on how it is done.

Personally, I'd rather not go searching through somebody elses source (e.g. Linux kernel).

Many thanks to all who can help!

[carbonBased]

Which chipset? Video, IDE, sound, motherboard, etc, etc?

Very often they all have their own detection routines. For stuff such as audio and video, you can usually determine via their PCI signatures.

--Jeff