IRQ-steering and ACPI

[moskus]

Hmm... I first this posted in the wrong forum, the Cakewalk forum, but this is more of a general problem, so forgive me for double-posting. If you want to read the replies I got, click here.

I've installed WinXP with ACPI enabled. Yes, I know it's stupid, but my PC didn't work at all with ACPI turned off. Now, as you can see my soundcard (Audiotrak Inca88) is using IRQ 19(!). And I see that there are lots of IRQs free.

The Miditrak is the Midi-driver on the Inca88.

What will happen if I steer the Inca88 to IRQ 7 in BIOS? Will it do me any good? Will Windows crash or still give the Inca88 IRQ 19?

 

[moskus]

Here's the IRQ settings on my PC...

 

[twist]

I haven't tried it, but I believe windows will ignore the BIOS settings if you have ACPI enabled.

Twist

 

[moskus]

I don't know... I steered the Incas IRQ to 5. My computer has never been more stable! Whoho! I call it victory (so far...)!



BUT: Windows now tells me that the Inca has IRQ 18. Damn this ACPI-thing!

 

[Jim Y]

Is there a problem with this Moskus? Everything I have heard, read and experienced tells me that if you have XP and a recent mobo or dual cpu mobo, then ACPI is the best thing that's happened to pc hardware - you have more than 15 irqs and probably no sharing/stacking (multiple USB controllers seem to stack though). XP is the first win o/s that properly works with mobos with an APIC interupt controller. And yes, XP ignores the bios setting but if you alter it, it may force XP to reallocate, just not to the bios irq.

 

[moskus]

Well, the problem is gone now. In BIOS the NIC and the soundcard was sharing IRQ 10 and even if WinXP assigned them to different IRQs (18 and 19), my computer would still crash when I did audio work (or only played mp3s).

But putting them on different IRQs in BIOS solved the problem, strangely enough...

 

[schnoops]

ACPI chaves much better on XP than on 2K, so you can leav it on, but windows will ignore your bios settings, as it has been said before.

Installing in standard PC will force you you to tweak your setting by hand.but there is one thing you should know:
-IRQ have priorities which are sorted like this, from highest to lowest:
0, 1, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
so if you can put you audio card on IRQ 9 rather than IRQ 5.


However, if you mobo is recent enough, it may have the APIC feature, wich allow you to have up to 256 independent IRQ lines with ACPI enabled under 2K or XP, wich definitely solve the IRQ sharing problem.

Hope that was clear enough.