How do I choose an IRQ for a PCI card?

[kwagner88]

Sounds simple enough. . .

I have an MPEG2 digitizing card that the maker says should have it's own IRQ to avoid problems (and I am having some). Currently, it is sharing IRQ 10 with my AGP Nvidia card and my yamaha sound card (since the digitizing sofware uses both the video and sound cards to send data to, you can see the possible problems here). I'm running Windows 98SE/1GHz P3/Matsonic Apollo Pro 133A w/Award BIOS 11/9/2000. The OS has been updated to all updates posted by microsoft and all drivers for the cards are updated as well. Win won't allow me to change the IRQ of any card by setting to manual. The BIOS will allow me to specify an IRQ for the the slot the digitizer is in, but when I do this, windows will assign the same IRQ to the sound and video card (very frustrating). I've tried the old change-to-another-slot trick to no avail. If anyone can help, please post here or email me at kwagner@home.com. Thanks.

 

[mindiris]

Hmm... you can try turning off "Plug and Play OS" in the bios to try to stop windows, and let the BIOS settings stand. Then try disabling ACPI in windows (this is the device that tries to assign everything to the same IRQ, among other things).

 

[bacillus]

is pci slot 1 free?
could you post your full irq list?

 

[shathal]

You haven't mentioned WHICH OS you use.

Win 9X/ME => You can change IRQ's in the BIOS (even with PnP set to ON), and the OS will take over those IRQ values.

W2K ==> W2K runs through virtual IRQ's. BIOS changes don't affect it.

Make sure that the PCI-slot next to the AGP-slot is free - they two are sharing IRQ's which may cause you your problem. If it IS free, disable on-board devices which you don't need - COM2 (IRQ 3), COM1 (IRQ4), Parallel Port (IRQ7) for instance. Then assign one of those free IRQ's to the PCI-slot your card is in. Win 9X/ME should take the new value in terms of IRQ without a hitch.

That should sort you out.

Hope this helps .

 

[bacillus]

<< You haven't mentioned WHICH OS you use >>





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