The DMA controller is an FPGA that must be configured before it will function. See the section on Configuring the CIP for instructions on downloading the DMA controller configuration image. The necessary images will be supplied by Picture Elements with the board. the rest of this section assumes that the IMC has already been configured.
The IMC is a standard PCI device on the Tertiary PCI bus, and as such is initially configured like any other PCI device. If the DEC bridge (which connects the i960RP secondary bus to the tertiary bus where the IMC resides) is made public, the host BIOS will notice and configure the device. If the DEC bridge is private, then the i960 software configures the IMC as any other standard PCI device.