Questions about ACPI & IRQ

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coplinger

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I was told by Midiman that it is bad to even share IRQ with ACPI IRQ holder for PCI steering. I read in other posts here that this is OK. When I disabled ACPI in the BIOS, I opened up a whole can of worms I wont even go into-(Don't do this unless you really know what you're doing). Once I reinstall my OS & my hardware, if nothing is sharing my sound card's IRQ, can I assume my problems are non IRQ related or are there other IRQ issues to deal with as well. Is it possible to run a win98 system without ACPI?
 
coplinger said:
I was told by Midiman that it is bad to even share IRQ with ACPI IRQ holder for PCI steering. I read in other posts here that this is OK. When I disabled ACPI in the BIOS, I opened up a whole can of worms I wont even go into-(Don't do this unless you really know what you're doing). Once I reinstall my OS & my hardware, if nothing is sharing my sound card's IRQ, can I assume my problems are non IRQ related or are there other IRQ issues to deal with as well. Is it possible to run a win98 system without ACPI?
Click to expand...

That is weird they would say that about the IRQ holder. I was under them impression that was impossible to remove and it was reserving the IRQ for that device.

What is the problem?
 
I went through this episode with ACPI when trying to clear a problem with pops and clicks in Sonar under WinXp. Some discoveries:

1) Using WinXp or Win2k requires you to re-install the O/S in order to run non-ACPI mode. You disable all power management in your BIOS, then install (but see #3).

2) Win98 will allow you to disable ACPI without re-installing your O/S. You should just be able to disable it in the BIOS and your system should adapt, unless you have....

3) Certain motherboards just don't allow you to disable ACPI period, for example my ASUS P3B-F (very common mobo using intel 440bx chipset). Learned this the hardway after re-installing WinXp twice and having the same config appear (doh!).

Why do all this anyway? Well several audio board mfr's have claimed that ACPI causes issues with audio recording (artifacts, etc.). Talk to Microsoft about it, and they'll scratch their heads and tell you it's impossible to install WinXP without ACPI. Talk to other people who've done it succesfully, and the net net result is you will be as confused as I was.

That being said, I proceeded to setup a hardware profile under WinXP, and disabled every bit of hardware I wasn't using to record (com ports, parallel port, net card, usb, etc.). This freed up quite a bit of resources in my system, but I still had IRQ sharing.

So then swapping the physical slot of my sound card let me change the IRQ in use (actually, it can affect the IRQ's of all your devices). After trial and error, I got a clean IRQ for audio.

The experience really pissed me off because I spent way too much time on it, but I did clear up the pop/click issues and have a stable workstation now for recording. Gah!
 
tex-
See other recent posts (clicks & pops & Beware VIA chipset problems) to get some history on this. Basically, I have set up a new DAW (Athlon 2100, VIA KT266A, win98SE) to run a Roland Studio Pack & have not been able to record without clicks & pops. I've had all kinds of advice (a lot of it conflicting) from Midiman, Roland & this & other BB's, and after 4 weeks have not been able to solve the problem. To make matters worse I just screwed the whole system up by trying to run without ACPI & now must start from scratch. I am very puzzled since it seems a lot of folks out there are running similar systems with no problems.

Heinz-
I am running win98 & have a mobo that allows disabling ACPI, but trust me , disabling it was not a good idea. It wouldn't allow me to reinstall any of my hardware or drivers & when I enabled ACPI again, all kinds of crazy stuff went on with my hardware.

I had already disabled all unneccessary hardware & got a clean IRQ (05 with nothing else sharing it except the ACPI IRQ PCI steering thing) for my soundcard before I tried disabling the ACPI.
 
I'm running the Roland Studio Pack on an older VIA chipset with a P3 750 and haven't really had any problems. There is a yahoo group for the Studio Pack and you might get some info there. Sorry I don't have the link handy but you should be able to find it with a search on Yahoo Groups.
 
I also seem to recall that the studio pack only works with Win98. I can't remember if that was a limitation of the RBUS card or the Logic software but that is the official supported OS.
 
In some cases pops and clicks could be caused by PCI video card. Solution - switch to AGP.

As far as ACPI goes, some folks suggest to disable it without reinstalling the system. Well, its possible, but it is a time bomb! Unless it is Windows 98, it is better to reinstall the whole thing.
 
Do a fresh install of XP/2K. When the first screen comes up with the bar on the bottom that says 'press f6 to install third-party raid drivers', press f5 like mad. Yes, f5.

In a minute you should see a screen that allows you to set up the machine type. Select 'Standard PC' and away you go. Should be no problem.

To do this without reinstalling, which is what I prefer to do, navigate to 'device manager' and select 'computer'. Change the driver to 'Standard PC'. When you reboot (XP will kick and scream but ignore it) you will have to reinstall all your drivers. Do this the easy way: Manually get the OS to look for the drivers in 'Windows\system32' and 'Windows\system32\drivers'. Those two directories contain all the files needed by the OS, it just doesn't know it.

That should take care of any clicks and pops due to ACPI. I use a Via KT266A mobo with a SB Live! and have absolutely click-free recording. It doesn't always sound too good, but I can live with its quality for now.

And oh, Win 98 has the worst response I've ever seen to switching Power Management off, it will have duplicates (and sometimes triplicates of each device in device manager, one for ACPI and one for non-ACPI. Win2K/XP will not start if you disable PM from BIOS without reinstalling. As a matter of fact, once these are installed, you should mess with BIOS settings as little as possible, as the OS will refuse to boot most of the time.

Sang
 
sangram-
What you are saying is that I can run "Standard PC' mode in 2000 & XP, but it is not a good idea to run 'Standard PC' mode on 98 at all. Is this correct?

Its funny you mention duplicates in the device mgr-this is exactly what happened to me & there were errors on almost everything. It didn't like any of my hardware or drivers anymore.
 
Funny enough, 98 cannot run in 'Standard PC' mode at all. What it basically does is redetect the hardware as non-ACPI enabled devices and adds them along with the earlier ACPI-capable devices. On bootup, it searches for the devices and marks those not present as 'not available'.

The best way to avoid any problems whatsoever IMO is to switch Power Management off from BIOS and then start fresh installs. That way all OSs should install in the so-called 'Standard PC' mode.

I basically am too lazy to do fresh installs, so I just restored an old Win2K ACPI image and then converted it to Standard PC. When I do my next upgrade I'l think of a fresh install, 'cause it takes me about eight hours to do it all over again.
 
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