Disabled PCI Card & Inseparable IRQ

The Z Station · Post by **The Z Station** » Mon Apr 29, 2002 7:59 am

Does a disabled PCI card (under Unknown devices and not taking any resources, no drivers loaded) still being scanned by the Proc, and taking PCI resources/bandwidth?

Also, Pulsar II+ and Adaptec 29160 SCSI seems to want the same IRQ, even forcing IRQ's in BIOS. Perhaps, the only solution is to reposition the cards on different slots.

Much Thanks!

Post by **garyb** » Mon Apr 29, 2002 9:18 am

i believe you are right on both counts.....

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Mon Apr 29, 2002 1:20 pm

-disabled hardware will not cause interrupts, they will release their IRQ.

-choosing a different slot can quickly put your device to a different IRQ, indeed. PCI slot 2 is mostly best for CW cards. The first PCI slot usually shares resources with AGP slot.

The Z Station · Post by **The Z Station** » Mon Apr 29, 2002 2:46 pm

Thanks guys!

The reason for this query was:

Just for redunancy's sake - A dualboot system...

[HARDWARE]
MoBo: Asus CUBX (latest BIOS)
Proc: PIII - 700MHz
RAM: 512MB PC100
VID: ATI Xpert 2000
PCI4: D-Link NIC
PCI5: Adaptec 29160 SCSI
PCI6: Pulsar II Plus
ISA: tripleBOARD II

[BIOS SETTINGS]
- all monitoring disabled
- serial ports disabled
- parallel port disabled
- USB disabled
- PlugNPlay OS disabled
- PCI Slot 6 (Pulsar) fixed to IRQ 5
- PCI Slot 5 (Adaptec) fixed to IRQ 3

[98SE HOST]
- clean install, no agents, minimal components, no ACPI
- optimised for audio
- D-Link NIC disabled, no drivers loaded (Unknown device)
- tripleDAT 3.06
- Pulsar 3.01 NO XTC
- tripleDAT 3.11b
- DAT4WIN (Yes, I still use this handy backup tool!)
- EZCD 95 Pro light (came with my HP6020i CD-R)

[XP Pro HOST]
- Standard install
- Network
- not optimised for audio
- Office 2000 Pro
- Winamp 2.79
- MusicMatch 6.x
- Pulsar 3.0/3.01b XTC (over)

[Dispositions]
- I was having Illegal ops on tripleDAT/Pulsar 3.01 on 98SE (the usual msvcrt/base dll suspect files, and then some)
- wordclock drops on tripleDAT record

[THE ENIGMA]
- Pulsar runs very comfourtably in Windows XP Pro with all that is has, even with an active network! Haven't yielded any errors at all! (except some minor clicks and pops while streaming mpegs from another machine, but those go away after a reboot)

- With a VERY light Win98SE (full version), no network or any other background programs running, and is tweaked for audio, Pulsar was yielding those dreaded "Illegal Operations" messages???

I was just curious why Pulsar is running well on XP but having problems with 98SE on the same system?!

The thing is, too, when I installed Pulsar seven months ago on my last configuration,

- Win98SE (standard install)
- Not tweaked
- SB Live! MP3+ 5.1 (which took 2 IRQ resrouces)
- ATI Rage Fury Maxx (which took 2 IRQ resources)
- direct cable network (parallel - slow!)
- No NIC
- ACPI installed

tripleDAT/Pulsar 3.01 was running very well?!

You would think that a cleaner 98SE with nothing but Creamware Apps will run even better! I begged to differ....
After some more tweaks, things are running well now!

I still am thinking that the reason behind the instability is that Pulsar & 29160 is sharing IRQ #4 or whatever... They seem to like to stick together?!

They had different IRQ assignments when I had SB Live! installed?!

Also, although the NIC is diabled in 98SE, in the hardware level, it was still probably taking bandwidth away from the PCI bus???

These sparked my curiousities....

[ This Message was edited by: The Z Station on 2002-04-29 15:49 ]

[ This Message was edited by: The Z Station on 2002-04-29 19:51 ]

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Mon Apr 29, 2002 4:21 pm

A few items that may be suspect, first, perhaps your dualboot isn't setup correctly, being that it was working when you only had 9x installed before, and second, perhaps you "over tweaked" for audio and ended up removing or altering settings ...

Post by **garyb** » Mon Apr 29, 2002 7:47 pm

also just a thought,are you SURE that you have the proper driver for pulsar loaded when 98 boots?

The Z Station · Post by **The Z Station** » Tue Apr 30, 2002 11:12 am

I've untweaked some of the parameters, and traced back to my original config.
I'm not sure about my dual-boot settings... As far as I know, it should be okay...

Also, I reverted back to the Pulsar II driver found on the original v3.0 CD-ROM.

Now:
- VCache boundaries: 16384 (seems that setting the limits help eliminate my word clock drop problems, haven't had one since, and, when I leave it off, I get those drops again... Please verify)
- Automatic Virtual Memory (since I use an external U160 HD for all my audio)
- Double Buffering =0 for SCSI
- Also, with regards to write-behind caching... Since I can't have my removable drives and fixed drives both disabled at the same time, I left that unchecked to disable W-B caching on my exernal drives
- DirectX 8.0

I've concluded that the hardware settings are okay since Pulsar 3.01 is running very well on the XP side eventhough Pulsar II+ and A29160 are sharing the same IRQ...

Overall, after applying some of these, it's running better now!

[ This Message was edited by: The Z Station on 2002-04-30 12:13 ]