[spankibalt]

The average user didn't have "to mess much" with that in DOSland either. Most of that is just false memory.

IRQ settings? Pffft. Cards came factory-configured to a default that was then detected by the setup routine of any game coded in a merely competent enough fashion. And you were free to change the jumper config on the card... which obviously meant you had to change it accordingly in a game's (or application's) setup config. It's all in the manual. Et cetera.

That indeed teached you at least a modicum of working basic literacy of how some of the systems in your computer worked. Back then, I never heard PC people bitching about these trivialities. That came much later, often in form of lamentations of still bitter Amiga nerdlingers, confused "retro" gamers, or (other) computer illiterates.