PCI IRQ's and buss share issues.

[RonnieG]

Hi following on from a question in the firewire compatibe card thread and in conjunction with me having issues with my Liquid Mix droping of. (NO audio vst times out) i read this article of Martins.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may03/a ... an0503.asp

Now i've tried to run the SANDY software but it crashes my system so I've unistalled it.
However i downloaded my mother board instructions and read the following.

.......................A..............B..............C............D..etc
PCi 1.........Shared
PCi 2.....................Shared
PCI 3........................................Shared
O/b Usb1..Shared
O/B Usb2..Shared
O/B Lan1..Shared

Then a statement under the grid reads.
NB:When using cards PCi cards on shared slots ensure the drivers support "Share IRQ" or that the cards do not need IRQ assignments. Otherwise conflicts will arise between the two PCI groups making the system unstable and card inoperable.

I'm a little confused because a table above it (i can't cut and paste out of a PDF doc) states

Irq 5 9 10 and 11 are listed as "IRQ holder for PCI steering".

Now from the first paragraph I'm thinking I'm doomed as the motherboard is just not right to give a PCI card exclusivenes.something the LM demands i believe.

But from the last statement about IRQ holding i see i may be able to do some steering?

Hope someone can give me some hope

Rgds Ronnie

[John Roberts]

Hi Ronnie,

What motherboard and OS are you using?

[RonnieG]

Hi John
thanks for the interest.

Its an ASUS A8N-E

XP Home Edition (2002)
SP2
(sp2 already in it on purchase)

Athlon 64x2 Dual Core 2.21 Ghz.

Ronnie

[Pete Kaine]

Shouldn't be a problem as XP handles sharing just fine. Have your tried swapping your card into a different slot to see if it reassigns the irq to an unshared one? It's rare to get an exclusive slot from XP onwards through, and I do recall those Asus boards not being the greatest for audio work at the time.

[Pete Kaine]

The A8N-E was based around an Nvidia chipset which to put it bluntly were problematic at best for use with a lot of audio hardware. I'd find someone with another machine that you can test this card in just to make sure it's working and to prove whether or not it's the M/B or other hardware conflicting currently.