Legacy Board and IRQ's!!!!

[Pghpooh]

HI
I have a old Yamaha sound card on my computer. It is designated as a "Legacy" board plugged into a ISA slot and uses 2 IRQ's.
I am going to be adding adsl to my computer in a few weeks and the NIC card will need a IRQ. It looks like I have 2 spare IRQ's to use on the NIC card.
While I have the puter case open, would I gain or free up a IRQ if I were to replace the sound card with a PCI slot sound card???
Thanks
Pghpooh

 

[The Stigenator]

if I remember right the old ISA soundcards didnt like to share IRQ's very much.
You can get a PCI soundcard and it will proabbaly share an IRQ with the NIC.
however if you are happy with teh soundcard.. then keep it that way.. it shouldnt bother the NIC very much..
BTW: hope you are running 98/98SE.. its better at holding IRQ's.

 

[DaddyG]

Its possible that you can disable SB Emulation (only used by DOS) on your sound card, could be with the driver, or a jumper on the card.

 

[NicColt]

Before proceeding I think you should sacrafice a lamb at the alter and seek divine intervention. But seriously this can be a very smoth transition or very difficult. What's your system anyway, cards? slots? irq? and definetly disable the DOS emulation. let us know we'll try to help.

 

[Pghpooh]

.

 

[Pghpooh]

HI
Sorry that I am slow in getting back to this post. Had a few other things to take care of.
Ok,, here is what I did. I installed the NIC card. The install went well.
I verified that it is in and working,, by checking system properties and so on. I found the NIC is conflicting with my sound card. They both want to use IRQ 10. The sound card is a Yamaha ISA card. And, my sound is dead. I moved the sound card to a different slot and that didn't work. Since the NIC card seems to want to use IRQ 10, I feel moving cards would be a waste of time. (A newbie guess!) The 2 fixes suggested when using the Win 98se trouble shooting is to remove the sound card or, remove a driver.
I would like to have sound! (It keeps me awake at 2 am!! BG) And,,removing the driver "Might" kill the sound??
My system is OLD!!!
Running a P166
80 meg ram
20 gig hard drive
Biostar AT motherboard
4 ISA slots and 3 PCI slots
Replaced the original bios with a Mr Bios so I coould
use a 20 gig drive.
My concern is since the MB is old, and from what I can see, it does support bus mastering for the NIC. But, I don't know if it is on all slots or just 1 PCI slot. If I went to a PCI sound card,, would it use a different IRQ?? And,, by using a PCI sound card along with the PCI nic card and PCI video card,, will Win 98 se be able to assign the IRQ's without a conflict?
(again a newbie question)
Thanks
Pghpooh

 

[NicColt]

Good God..... I havent seen that in a while, it can be a little bit more difficult than I thought, does your system have PnP are you using a config.sys and autoexec.bat if so post them.

 

[Pghpooh]

HI
"Good God..... I havent seen that in a while" Does that mean I can sell my pc as a antique and buy a new one????
The BIOS supports plug and play and so does Win98 se. When I install most boards, win98 will detect it and at that point I load the drivers that came with the board that I am installing.
Thanks
Pghpooh

 

[DaddyG]

Do as i said and Disable SB Emulation. Only used by DOS, no great loss. Then you will free up 1 IRQ. Your sound will not be affected at all in Winblows.