1. In a computer system having a plurality of expansion cards and a memory, a method of assigning system I/O resources comprising the steps of: (a) creating a single global conflict resolver for resolving all resource conflicts in the computer system; (b) automatically identifying each I/O function in the computer system and obtaining resource requirements therefor; (c) formatting the resource requirements into a predetermined standard format; (d) providing the formatted resource requirements to the global conflict resolver; (e) using the conflict resolver to iteratively compute a resource assignment for each I/O function which resource assignment does not conflict with other resource assignments; and (f) storing the computed each resource assignment in the memory in a standard format together with a corresponding resource requirement.