Dangnabit!! IRQ sharing sucks!

The sound card is a bit old and may not support IRQ sharing.  The sound works but becomes unresponsive after a game starts.

David

Take a look at this MS KB article

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q252420

BEGIN ARTICLE

General Description of IRQ Sharing in Windows 2000
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server

For a Microsoft Windows XP version of this article, see Q314068.
NOTE: This article is for informational use only; it does not contain any troubleshooting information. If you are searching for troubleshooting information that is not referred to in this article, please try searching the Microsoft Knowledge Base again by using keywords that are listed in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
Q242450 How to Query the Microsoft Knowledge Base Using Keywords
Summary
In Windows, peripheral component interconnect (PCI) devices can share interrupts (IRQs) by design. Per the Plug and Play capability that is defined by the PCI specification, adapters are configured by the computer's BIOS, and are then examined by the operating system and changed if necessary. It is normal behavior for PCI devices to have IRQs shared among them, especially for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (APCI) computers with Windows ACPI support enabled.
More Information
In Windows, some or all of the devices on your ACPI motherboard may be listed when you view the resources in Device Manager as using the same IRQ (IRQ 9) (to view the list of resources click either Resources by type, or Resources by connection on the View menu). You cannot change the IRQ setting because the setting is unavailable. This occurs because Windows takes advantage of the ACPI features of the motherboard, including advanced PCI sharing. IRQ 9 is used by the PCI bus for IRQ steering. This feature lets you add more devices without generating IRQ conflicts.

Note that Windows 2000 does not have the ability to rebalance resources in the same way that Microsoft Windows 98 does. After PCI resources are set, they generally cannot be changed. If you change to an invalid IRQ setting or I/O range for the bus that a device is on, Windows 2000 cannot rebalance the resource it assigned to that bus to compensate. Windows 2000 does not have this ability because of the more complex hardware schemas it is designed to support. Windows 98 does not have to support IOAPICs, multiple root PCI buses, multiple-processor systems, and so on. Rebalancing becomes risky when you are dealing with these hardware schemas, and will not be implemented in Windows 2000 except for very specific scenarios. However, PCI devices are required to be able to share IRQs. The ability to share IRQs should not prevent any hardware from working in general.

The Plug and Play operating system settings in the computer's BIOS should not affect how Windows handles the hardware in general. However, Microsoft recommends that you set this setting to "No" or "Disabled" in the computer's BIOS. For information about viewing or modifying your computer's BIOS settings, consult your computer's documentation or manufacturer.

Manually assigning IRQs to PCI slots in the System BIOS as a troubleshooting method may work on some non-ACPI systems when using a standard PC HAL, but these settings are ignored by Plug and Play in Windows if ACPI support is enabled. If you need to manually assign IRQ addresses through the BIOS to a device on an ACPI motherboard, you will need to re-install Windows to force the installation to use a Standard PC HAL. For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
Q216251 How to Specify a Specific or Third-Party HAL During Windows 2000 Setup

COPYRIGHT NOTICE. Copyright 2002 Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington 98052-6399 U.S.A. All rights reserved.
 
END  ARTICLE

Doh, this is so frustrating.  W2K is worse than 9x in this perspective.

The game runs but sound does not output.

I'll try upgrading the sound card.

Thanks,
David

Hmm I just took a closer look and it seems unusual for that many devices to be shareing one IRQ. I noticed IRQ 11 is not even being used at all. On my system my video and sound cards share IRQ 11 and this works fine. Not sure why Win2000 decided to to put so many devices on one IRQ unless those devices where designed to use only that particular IRQ.

If you're having problems with sound I'd personally look at the sound card drivers. Since Aureal went bust a LONG time ago now, the odds are they never wrote a proper Win2K driver for that sound card you have, so it's anyone's guess as to what driver it actually IS using. I had to get rid of my well-loved Vortex 2 card because the Win2K drivers available were unreliable (caused lockups all the time) and there weren't any newer ones.

I'd have to ask first of all, is there a problem. Old DOS hands may look to the heavens when they see all these devices on IRQ 9, but in my experience this does work OK.

There are exceptions. ANd I note you are using an ASUS board. IMHO, the ASUS BIOSs at one time were not all that good - I recall a considerable amount of complaints in the newsgroups. Later BIOS rev's seemed to cure the problems.

So, it is just the appearance you are concenred about, or is there some othe real issue?

Thomas

tfl: To quote the second comment in the thread, as made by the questioner:

"The sound card is a bit old and may not support IRQ sharing.  The sound works but becomes unresponsive after a game starts."

Sounds like a problem to me.

What I can't tell is whether this is a game issue or a general issue.

There are a couple of things you can do:

1. Reinstall Win2k and force Win2k to NOT use ACPI. I had to do this in the early days of WIn2k on my Gigabyte-board home brew.

2. Ensured you have the most up to date bios rev for your mobo.

3. Ensure that the game is supported on Win2k.

4. Replace the sound card with something more up to date. For some reason just now, the HCL site at MS is not avaialble so I can't check to see if this card is supported. If the card +is+ supported, then it will handle shared PCI interrupts.

HTH

Thomas

1. Ack! Noooo...If I reinstall any more windows from here on out, I'm gonna start blowing chunks.

2. I have Asus A7V, never had problems here.

3. It's not just the games.  Any app that utilizes the sound card has the same problem.

4. Yeah, I just order a SoundBlaster.  Crossing my fingers.

Thanks guys,
David

1. The only safe way to change HALs is to reinstall. Sorry. You can _try_ going into the device manager and changing the HAL (selct the PC in the device tree then change the driver) but this is not certain to work and may cause you to end up re-installing anyway! It did, however, work on my system.

2. As for Asus, I have seen a lot of issues - Gigabyte was not much better. These _were_ in the early days on Windows 2000 - I guess I'm just cautious...

3. It sounds like a sound card driver issue from what you say.

4. Having checked-the mb implementaed Aurreal 8810 is suppported - exactaly what is your configuration?

Thomas

Which version of the A7V do you have? If you're getting a SoundBlaster Live!, they have issues with the VIA 686B South Bridge used on some A7V motherboards--I'm just replacing mine for this reason.

I believe it's the first version.  Just A7V.  No prefix after the name.  Additionally, it didn't come with the on-board audio, hopefully that doesn't matter.

I'm getting the SoundBlaster PCI 128.  That's different right?

David

PCI 128 should be fine--it's just the Live! series which has difficulties.

WoooHooo!!! The SoundBlaster works with the IRQ sharing. Crediting the points

See that wasn't so painful was it? :>)

>>>Crediting the points

Looks like pjknibbs and myself where the first ones that pushed the idea of trying a different sound card. :>)

CrazyOne
08/11/2002 08:19PM PST

pjknibbs
08/11/2002 11:59PM PST
 
 

Errmm....EE is having some difficulties I suppose.

Apache Tomcat/4.0.2 - HTTP Status 500 - Internal Server Error

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

type Exception report

message Internal Server Error

description The server encountered an internal error (Internal Server Error) that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: Unable to compile class for JSPNote: sun.tools.javac.Main has been deprecated.


An error occurred between lines: 1 and 40 in the jsp file: /jsp/../shared/emailCommentAdded.jsp

Generated servlet error:
/home/ee/tomcat/work/localhost/_/jsp/qAcceptComment$jsp.java:1010: Undefined variable or class name: ta
                     emailBody2 = ta.getPathFromCache() + "Q_" + qId + ".html\n\n";
                                  ^


An error occurred between lines: 1 and 41 in the jsp file: /jsp/../shared/emailAcceptAnswer.jsp

Generated servlet error:
/home/ee/tomcat/work/localhost/_/jsp/qAcceptComment$jsp.java:1090: Undefined variable or class name: ta
                     emailBody2 =  ta.getPathFromCache() + "Q_" + qId + ".html\n\n";
                                   ^

I'll try again tommorrow.