IRQ Question

[evil_homer]

just a quick question about IRQ's. How much hardware is suppost to be on one IRQ? I've got a system that has up to four on IRQ 10. How many is normal?
System stats

AMD T-bird 900mhz
VIA FP KT-133 mobo
Geforce 2 PRO
Realtek 10\100m Fast Ethernet Card


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[Guest]

As long as everything works there is no limit...........all thanks to PCI IRQ steering. But some devices do not like to share so sometime in the future you may get a problem. I'd remove some of the devices and one at a time let Windows add them and that should help them move to a free IRQ or spread out the IRQ load.

 

[jc14all]

That depends on which OS you are using. If Win9x/Me only one piece of hardware can share the same IRQ with the "IRQ Holder for PCI steering" or USB, which means, e.g., IRQ 5 - Sound Card, IRQ 5 - Holder for PCI steering, or IRQ 5 - USB Universal host controller. But never should 2 pieces of hardware share the same IRQ in Win9x/Me or there may be conflicts.

If Win2k IRQ sharing is no problem "see Microsoft Knowledge Base article: Q252420.

JC-------<*){{{>{~~~~~
Fisher of men

 

[madmike]

I agree with SINternet - it shouldn't be a problem. I have six devices on IRQ 10 under Win98se. Everything works great. I wouldn't worry about it. I would only force a device to use a specific IRQ if I couldn't get it to work any other way. We used to have to do that under DOS, and it was a real hassle juggling interrupts if you had more than a couple of devices.

 

[Crashman]

I have had up to 14 devices sharing IRQ10. BTW, I run a system full of cards with all ports enabled. But you can only do that with an Intel chipset methinks.

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[alc101ma]

How exactly do you go about changing the IRQ's? In the bios it lets me set it to PCI device over automatic. In windows98 it won't let me change it. Is there another option in the bios I have to change also?

 

[Crashman]

Oh, gosh, I could go on for hours about different ways to change your IRQ's that may or may not work depending on other settup factors.

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