Thread: The evils of IRQ sharing

  1. #1
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    Unhappy The evils of IRQ sharing

    Hello,

    After having trouble with my TV card, I contacted technical support, who asked me to check a few things. Looking in Device Manager, I noticed I have no less than six devices:- Graphics card, sound card, network card, secondary IDE controller, USB controller and the TV tuner, all on IRQ 9!

    Tech support suggested I engage in a spot of musical chairs with my cards, particularly considering the bus-hogging prowess of the 3Com network card and the SB Live!. What I'm wondering is that since I left IRQ assignments up to Windows 2000, perhaps I should get the more sensible BIOS to sort it out instead (Turn Plug 'n' Play OS off)?

  2. #2
    5|-|1+|-|34|) ober's Avatar
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    That's the route I would go. I've seen up to 3 devices sharing the same IRQ... but not 6!

  3. #3
    PC Fixer-Upper Waldo2k2's Avatar
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    double wow

    I can't believe windows did that...has it always been like this? or is this a recent install?
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  4. #4
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    I dunno, last year when I was running Windows 98 SE on its own and didn't have the TV card or IDE floppy it was fine, ran perfectly (Aside from crashing on ACPI standby, but apparently that's a feature of the OS). I dual boot with Win98 now, and it doesn't like the setup at all. It takes about five minutes to startup as it keeps hanging, waiting for the chips to stop bickering between themselves and do what it wants.

    It's actually quite funny to watch it: It gets to initialising the USB controller, then tries to change from text mode to SVGA. A blank screen. A minute passes. The monitor changes sync, but the screen remains blank. A minute and a half passes, then the desktop finally appears. The explorer shell interface appears and then it hangs again for 30 seconds before finally chugging along. I'm pretty certain a 386 could've outran it, if Win98 would let you use one.

    And yet the Device Manager in both OSes says everything's fine. Must be Microsoft's idea of a joke...

  5. #5
    5|-|1+|-|34|) ober's Avatar
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    I have personally never heard of anyone NOT having problems with a TV card. For one reason or another, they always seem to cause problems. My roommate once gave me his because it caused so many problems... where is it now? Chillin with the rest of my unused cards in a drawer.

  6. #6
    PC Fixer-Upper Waldo2k2's Avatar
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    I'd take that, a cheap duron board and chip, some leftover ram and a spare monitor and viola! Tv!
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