Too many cards and devices not enough Slot's and IRQ's, Everything want's it's own IRQ.
The problem is not as much as not having free IRQ's, I have 3 free in my system right now, I have even disabled my 2 COM ports to get an extra 2, it has more to do with the x86 structure which has not been upgraded in 15 years which is standard in every personal computer on the planet, it only has 5 slots and slot 4 shares with 5 and also each slot requires 1 irq, so even if we would have 50 free irq's it would not help, even if you do have free IRQ's like irq 6 and 7 even these won't work because they are reserved. Also there's an increase in built-in devices on the motherboards like USB ports, ATA/100 or built-in sound controllers that are also requiring a Slot with a free IRQ. So if you have more Devices, either built-in or PCI cards, than slots then some have to share. I have 3 PCI slots left but even though I have 3 free IRQ's and I put another PCI card in there it will need to share an IRQ with one of the Slot IRQ's. Technically there's an agreement on a standard between companies that they should all be able to share but more increasingly, new devices like Sound Cards, USB ports, Video Cards are getting more arrogant in their installs and all want to run on a single irq for "optimal" stability. There are a couple of ways to fix this. 1. is do disable the PnP at the bios level and manually assign IRQ's or if your bios allows it to manually asign them, however this still doesn't fix the problem of the devices ability to share IRQ's on 4(5) slot's. 2. with PnP, is to move your cards until you see which will most likely share, I have switched my cards around 10 times before I finally got a good (hopefully) install. However even this is a hit and miss and hope for the best situation. Unless the x86 architecture agrees on a newer and more strict standard "sharing structure" or get's upgraded soon there will be massive problems in the months and years to come for those who want to add multiple devices, upgrade or build their own systems.
The problem is not as much as not having free IRQ's, I have 3 free in my system right now, I have even disabled my 2 COM ports to get an extra 2, it has more to do with the x86 structure which has not been upgraded in 15 years which is standard in every personal computer on the planet, it only has 5 slots and slot 4 shares with 5 and also each slot requires 1 irq, so even if we would have 50 free irq's it would not help, even if you do have free IRQ's like irq 6 and 7 even these won't work because they are reserved. Also there's an increase in built-in devices on the motherboards like USB ports, ATA/100 or built-in sound controllers that are also requiring a Slot with a free IRQ. So if you have more Devices, either built-in or PCI cards, than slots then some have to share. I have 3 PCI slots left but even though I have 3 free IRQ's and I put another PCI card in there it will need to share an IRQ with one of the Slot IRQ's. Technically there's an agreement on a standard between companies that they should all be able to share but more increasingly, new devices like Sound Cards, USB ports, Video Cards are getting more arrogant in their installs and all want to run on a single irq for "optimal" stability. There are a couple of ways to fix this. 1. is do disable the PnP at the bios level and manually assign IRQ's or if your bios allows it to manually asign them, however this still doesn't fix the problem of the devices ability to share IRQ's on 4(5) slot's. 2. with PnP, is to move your cards until you see which will most likely share, I have switched my cards around 10 times before I finally got a good (hopefully) install. However even this is a hit and miss and hope for the best situation. Unless the x86 architecture agrees on a newer and more strict standard "sharing structure" or get's upgraded soon there will be massive problems in the months and years to come for those who want to add multiple devices, upgrade or build their own systems.
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