sound cards and IRQ's

[bonedaddy]

Does anybody know of a program that allows you to force IRQ usage?........let me 'splain my dilemma......

I have an old Vortex 2 sound card that I'd like to use on my FIC AZ11EA mobo......problem is that the drivers for this audio card share IRQ's, including 11, which my Radeon VE 64MB DDR is trying to use.......this IRQ sharing led to some very jumpy graphics in Mechwarrior 4, forcing me to disable AGP texturing thru DXdiag. Uninstalling the vortex and using the onboard audio got rid of the IRQ problem, but it isn't the best audio codec in the world.

I know the quick and easy solution is to get a new sound card, but I am quite satisfied with the sound quality of the vortex 2...


system specs:

AMD Duron 900, AZ11EA mobo, ATI Radeon VE 64MB DDR, 20 GB Maxtor HDD, NEC 12X DVD, Phillips 8x4x32 CDR, oh, and win 98 v.4.0.....

[Wiggo]

Have a look in your BIOS and see if the IRQ's can be set in there. :smokin:

[bonedaddy]

the only two choices the BIOS give are PNP/PCI, or ISA as far as IRQ settings are concerned, I've tried turning the ACPI off, and selecting non-pnp/os, but that resulted in a non-bootable machine, or one that was looking for a pnp OS........

[sKuLLsHoT]

umn i think u should have ACPI off, if its always been off or else on...and PNP OS should be on, coz 98 is pnp compatible...

also, i would suggest looking at the IRQ table just after POST and see if this reflects the settings that are sown in win98...

if it does or even if it doesn't maybe its worth a hack at swapping the slots round that the cards u have installed are seated in

[Mr. C]

Yes, I use an au8820 based card.
When I installed it originally, it shared IRQ with video. Moved it to a different PCI slot, and Windows assigned it a new IRQ, and used the drivers already in place -- real painless.

[DigitalDD]

Does anybody know of a program that allows you to force IRQ usage?........let me 'splain my dilemma......

I have an old Vortex 2 sound card that I'd like to use on my FIC AZ11EA mobo......problem is that the drivers for this audio card share IRQ's, including 11, which my Radeon VE 64MB DDR is trying to use.......this IRQ sharing led to some very jumpy graphics in Mechwarrior 4, forcing me to disable AGP texturing thru DXdiag. Uninstalling the vortex and using the onboard audio got rid of the IRQ problem, but it isn't the best audio codec in the world.

it sounds like the PCI slot you have the soundcard in is sharing an IRQ with your video card [usually this means that the soundcard is in the slot next to the AGP slot].. Like Mr.C says move it to a different slot.. Check your motherboard manual to see which PCI slots share IRQs and which don't and make sure that you avaoid slots sharing IRQs with your LAN, drive controller or video card. A good rule of thumb if you don't have a manual for the motherboard is to skip a slot between cards, that usually results in no shared IRQs.
:thumb:

[Anonymous]

Had sound card in slot farthest away from AGP slot. Motherboard manual is vague, as they all are, when it comes to IRQ assignments.

[Wiggo]

It's not the rule that the AGP "must" share it's IRQ with the 1st PCI slot but that's generally how it is but some boards do share it with a different 1 and most of those are the last 1 instead, I even came across 1 that shared with the 2nd PCI slot . :smokin:
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