Old Box Needs Help

[Ol Bob]

I have an old duel P-3 " file-server" that I've added a usb2 card to. this caused the sound card to shut down and device manager shows not enough free resources for it. I see that there is no IRQ sharing in this thing, nor any irq's above 19,as would be found on newer box's.Can i force irq sharing or assign irq's above 19 somehow?
The mobo is an Abit vp-6 with via chipset and 2 P-3-1000. Os is xpsp2.Under "computer" in device manager it shows" acpi multi proccessor pc". Would this work if i change this to the " mps multiproccessor pc",tho I'm sure that I would have to do a repair install to reload the hive after changing ? I may switch it back to w2k rather than xp at that point due to the product activation problem. Keeping in mind also that intel used to have a seperate line of cpu's for mps compatability,and these chips are not that type.

 

[BadThad]

Did you try a different PCI slot?

 

[CrispyFried]

in the bios you may be able to dump stuff like the serial ports, ps/2 port and printer port to free up resources and assign them the usb and sound card. you may also be able to reassign ints in the bios too.

 

[Ol Bob]

The usb2 card is actually installed in the PCI slot formally occupied by a dial-up modem , which worked ok the last time I used it.Guess that a modem is one device and this usb card is 3 usb root hubs, or 3 device's? I have disabled the onboard usb1 controller- things like serial and parallel ports cannot be disabled on this board, only uninstalled. Windows re-installs them again at next boot.There is no onboard sound or video either.I'm wondering if this is just a limitation of the via appolo chipset. I also noticed that the Highpoint raid controler uses more that its fair share of system resources and I'm not sure if the default settings in the raid driver can be changed to free something up.

 

[CrispyFried]

in the device manager select "do not use in this profile" for those unused ports - you might have to create a couple of hardware profiles 1st, cant remember.

 

[BadThad]

Originally posted by: Ol Bob
The usb2 card is actually installed in the PCI slot formally occupied by a dial-up modem , which worked ok the last time I used it.Guess that a modem is one device and this usb card is 3 usb root hubs, or 3 device's? I have disabled the onboard usb1 controller- things like serial and parallel ports cannot be disabled on this board, only uninstalled. Windows re-installs them again at next boot.There is no onboard sound or video either.I'm wondering if this is just a limitation of the via appolo chipset. I also noticed that the Highpoint raid controler uses more that its fair share of system resources and I'm not sure if the default settings in the raid driver can be changed to free something up.

That would be VERY amazing, I've never seen a mobo in the past 15 years that wouldn't allow you to disable the COM and Parallel ports in the BIOS....and I mean NEVER...and I've worked on thousands of PC's over this time span from Dells to HP's to Generics.

 

[Ol Bob]

Sorry. I didn't look close enough at those com ports. They can be disabled after all.No effect tho- freeing up those low irq's 3-4&5 . Device manager seems to show the sound card on irq 18 with memory address range of FFFFFFC-FFFFFFF - 4 separate listings for the audio card and 4 for the game port. Tried to uninstall one and all 4 vanish untill reboot.

 

[BadThad]

Originally posted by: Ol Bob
Sorry. I didn't look close enough at those com ports. They can be disabled after all.No effect tho- freeing up those low irq's 3-4&5 . Device manager seems to show the sound card on irq 18 with memory address range of FFFFFFC-FFFFFFF - 4 separate listings for the audio card and 4 for the game port. Tried to uninstall one and all 4 vanish untill reboot.

Move the card to a different slot!

 

[CrispyFried]

also set PnP O/S to "yes" in the bios.

 

[BadThad]

Originally posted by: CrispyFried
also set PnP O/S to "yes" in the bios.

Hummm....from everything I've ever read, it's recommended to set PNPOS to "NO" for NT, Win2k and XP. Point me to something on the web that says otherwise because I've ALWAYS used and recommend "no" for NT kernel OSes.

 

[CrispyFried]

true, but in his case the bios may be locking out those ints from windows (some bios treat them as legacy ints and wont use them even when freed). windows may in this case be better as it may use those ints if the bios doesnt configure anything. who knows how old (smart) that bios is.

after all, he has nothing to lose and it isnt working atm, so..

anyway, try it both ways.

 

[Ol Bob]

Problem solved ! The sound card, which was sound blaster live 5.1 digital, was replaced with a sb live value and all is well now.Nothing seems to be wrong with the old card, it is working fine in anouther box, I guess it just requires more resources than was available.I don't remember the history of creative's product upgrades of the sb live cards but the 5.1 digital must really be a resource hog.