assigning IRQ's

peter miller

peter miller

New member
I know it's done in bios but how do i know which ones best for what ever.
I have noticed that my graphics and sound card share irq 5 along with a couple of other things.
I spose if i screw up i can restore bios defaults.:(
 
Actually, you can't just change them if you are using 98,ME,2000 or XP. In order to manually assign IRQ's you would need to take your PC out of ACPI mode and have it set up as a Standard PC.

Somebody else can probably post a link to a site that describes how to do this.
 
It's a lot less risky just to change the physical slot your sound card is in, that will force a re-assignment of IRQ and chances are you can get it on it's own IRQ.
 
heinz is right, you have to physically position your cards, as IRQ's are assigned by physical placement on the bus. Some BIOS's will have options for assigning IRQ's to specific slots, but it's not usually a very straight-forward process.

Your motherboard manual should have some information about your bus, including which slots share resources with eachother and other devices on the bus (like onboard IDE and ATA controllers). If you put your card in a slot that does not share resources with any existing components, you're set.

Note, most devices are pretty good about sharing resources, even soundcards. IRQ's are really blamed way too often. Make sure you have a problem before you go creating problems.

P.S., if your soundcard is sharing IRQ 5, then you are not using ACPI so there is no reason to disable ACPI. Under the ACPI model, all devices will be assigned IRQ 9.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Slackmaster2K said:
P.S., if your soundcard is sharing IRQ 5, then you are not using ACPI so there is no reason to disable ACPI. Under the ACPI model, all devices will be assigned IRQ 9.

Slackmaster 2000
Click to expand...

I have never heard that b4. Can you provide some web reading on the subject?
 
If ACPI is enabled and you're running 2000 or XP, AFAIK no amount of physical slot-swapping is going to help you switch IRQs.

Both of these OSs are designed to handle multiple devices on the same IRQs, whereas 98 and ME cannot, so by default they put separate devices on separate IRQs unless onboard features share with certain slots - a lot of time onboard USB hosts and sound, will share with a certain set of slots on the mobo. The only way to disable sharing in that scenario is to disable the onboard device or physically move the card.

For 2000/XP, likely you'll have to disable ACPI. That's actually a good thing for audio. Follow up the procedure by disabling the ACPI in BIOS too.

There are obviously a few exceptions, boards that let the OS know they're ACPI Uniprocessor PC systems will get separate IRQ assignments. One case I know of is the Asus P4T boards. There may be more. As a rule, if the default install bunches devices together (you'll notice ALL peripherals on the same IRQ, and only system devices will be on different IRQs) it's a certainty that you'll have to convert the device to standard PC.
 
Sangram said:
If ACPI is enabled and you're running 2000 or XP, AFAIK no amount of physical slot-swapping is going to help you switch IRQs.

Click to expand...


It does work. I have done it a couple of times.
 
The success or failure of assigning IRQ's may depend on if you have a good (name-brand + retail) motherboard or not. I've seen/owned PC's that worked 100% with the OEM hardware, but that wouldn't run anything new in the PCI slots right. I can't even change videocards in a ~5yr-old Acer Aspire I've got, I've tried 4 different cards and only the original works.
[Name-Brand means made by Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, Intel, Tyan, Soyo, etc.]
Generic and proprietary mobos tend to have crippled BIOS's that lack all the normal features and functionality.
DIY and use 100% name-brand parts.
~
w00t!
 
Sangram said:
If ACPI is enabled and you're running 2000 or XP, AFAIK no amount of physical slot-swapping is going to help you switch IRQs.
Click to expand...

That is simply not true, I've done it many times, and on many different systems.

Look I'm running an ACPI-enabled PC right now under Win XP Pro, on an ASUS P3B-F BX-based motherboard. My IRQ's stack up to:

0 - Timer
1 - Kybd
3 - Com2
4 - Com1
5 - net card, video card
6 - Floppy
8 - cmos/clock
9 - acpi, scsi adapter, usb
10 - delta 44
12 - ps/2 mouse
13 - numeric co-proc
14 - pri IDE
15 - sec IDE

I am sharing IRQ's for several devices, but by moving my delta around I got it on it's own IRQ (10).
 
I was gonna post a new thread but because everyone's already kinda on the topic here, I'll just tack this question on the end here.

I have ACPI disabled on my ECS mobo (k7ama model with Ali chipset) and my soundcard's driver is giving me IRQ conflicts on startup.

I have ST Audio's new DSP24 Value WDM driver and it works well upon install after win2k pro has booted. The problem I have occurs after I restart and go through the mobo boot process. I get this blue screen message

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
****ADDRESS BASE AT BFE561CE base at BFE45000,
Date startup 3d4f7ad4 - ADSPWDM.sys
Beginning dump of physical memory -

when I restart in safe mode and uninstall the driver, Win2k starts up fine and I have to reinstall the hardware again. My machine is functional this way but I have to think there's a better way to do this.

Now, for my question, is my driver just bogus? I tried their drivers for the Value card and their higher end MKII DSP24 card and got the same error message after startup. I also have already tried physically swapping PCI slots so that's not it. It's currently assigned to IRQ 10 and I have no other PCI cards in my machine. Any help?

miles maxwell
 
I checked under Device Manager and found out it was sharing IRQ 10 with my onboard NIC. All seems to be fixed now. Thanks...

miles
 
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