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Since when did a x86 system have more than 16 interrupts?!?!?

I'm looking through my device settings for one of my cards, and Windows XP reports that it's on interrupt 16! I know that a standard x86 computer used to have interrupts 0-15 for hardware control...

Did they make changes when the Pentium 4 came out that allowed for more than 16 hardware interrupts? Or is this just some smoke and mirror tactics done by Microsoft?

I even used a PCI32 program to get a list of the interrupts, and I had all the way up to Interrupt 22!

What I'm thinking is that Windows is somehow "binding" the hardware to a software interrupt. If this is true, please let me know.

Thanks for any help you can provide. This should be a rather easy question to answer.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Callandor

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SOLUTION

stockhes

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Lost_In_JavaScript_Land

ASKER

Since Callandor answered the question first, he will get the original 25 points. Since I am extremely low on points right now, I will wait a few days to award the points until I have 20 extra points to give to stockhes for his very detailed answer.

Callandor

Even I would give stockhes points for his detailed answer! ;-)

Lost_In_JavaScript_Land

ASKER

I'm assigning the points now.