Win2K in Standard Mode

[tradivoro]

Hi there... I have recently installed Windows 2000 in my new computer... Now this computer I've made so that I could do music on it... The computer is in ACPI mode, which is not exactly the best for music.. Reason being, it shares a lot of irq's and basically sound cards and midi cards want to be on their own irq in music... So my question is 2 fold.. If I change to standard pc mode, will I still have access to my 1 1/2 gigs of ram or is it going to run like Windows 98? Also, if I leave it in ACPI mode, is there a way to manually change the irqs, so I can have the sound card and the midi card on a separate irq?? At this point, the sound card and the video card are sharing the same irq, the sound card makes pops and clicks because of this... Any info available.. Thanks....

 

[jlanka]

have you tried moving them to different PCI slots? Usually ACPI doesn't have an adverse affect on music.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[tradivoro]

Well, it does with this particular sound card which is the Delta 44 by M-Audio... If it doesn't have it's own irq, it pops and clicks all over the place... I'm trying somethign now that will allow me to change the irq of the video card in acpi and see if that helps... Thanks for your reply...

 

[jlanka]

you didn't answer my question

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[tradivoro]

No, I haven't changed different pci slot... On this machine, this is all I have, a video card on an agp slot, a soundcard, and an ethernet card... It's got 5 pci slots... Is putting it on a different pci slot going to change the irq? what I need to do is to put it on a different irq... In Windows 98, it was very simple, you found the piece of hardware with the irq conflict, you switched the irq number and that was the end of the conflict... any reason why this can't be done in Windows 2000?

 

[CompSci]

Jlanka's right on, and givin good advice...
Change slots! depending on the mobo, slots share interupts, dma, scheduling, etc...
It's not advisable to disable ACPI and atempt to manhandle W2K's hardware abstraction level management... In particular, read your mobo manual and select a slot that shares interupt with with an unused slot! I have the same problem, my soundcard cant be in a slot that shares interupt with a slot with a nic... or I get pops and cracks too...
Mix and match slots a bit and pops/cracks will go away...

 

[jlanka]

nice explanation.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[jlanka]

Win2K ACPI is a completely different animal than the old 98 way of doing things. You're stuck in the 19th century thinking you MUST disable ACPI to make your sound card work (AKA giving it a seperate IRQ). Like the other poster below explained, there are other underlying things in the hardware which behoove you to try different slot combinations to fix this problem.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[tradivoro]

Hi, thanks very much for your replies... It's not that I didn't try this cause I didn't want to, I just haven't had a chance to do this... But I'll definitely move it to a different pci slot and let you know how it goes.. Thanks for the help...

 

[jlanka]

don't just try one. Try a few different ones. Good luck.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>