IRQ G400 Max Troubles----Fixed??

[SirJamesIII]

I posted long ago about having an IRQ trouble with my Matrox sharing IRQ 11 with my integrated sound card. Well, I broke down and went and stole my old sound card from my old computer. It's a poor little AWE64. Heck, it's even an ISA card. But I was desperate and broke. Well, after reformatting and installing the old sound card. Everything seemed to work fine.

Then I started adding more cards. I installed my ethernet card, and problems occured. It's really weird. I have 5 PCI slots under my AGP slot. If I put the ethernet card on ANY slot except for the one two slots down from the AGP, as soon as windows gets past the "windows 98 load screen" it locks up and does the fragmenting line things. However, when I put the card on the second slot down from the AGP slot, it seems to work fine. I haven't had one lock-up/line fest yet. Yet the Graphics card and the Ethernet card are sharing IRQ's????

I think I'm just throwing my bid in to hope everything keeps working. Because I don't want to have to make my head explode trying to figure this out.

Any ideas on why this would be? And if I should be worried??

Specs --

PII - 350
128 RAM
PhoenixBios (most recent version)
SoundBlaster AWE64

IRQ's --
0 System timer
1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
2 Programmable interrupt controller
3 (free)
4 (free)
5 Creative AWE64 16-bit Audio (SB16 compatible)
6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller
7 ECP Printer Port (LPT1)
8 System CMOS/real time clock
9 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
9 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
10 (free)
11 Realtek RTL8029 Ethernet Adapter and Compatibles
11 Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead - English
11 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
13 Numeric data processor
14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
14 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
15 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller


Until it messes up...this is more for curiousity than anything. Thanks for your time.

[Brian R.]

What is the IRQ configuration with the Ethernet card in other slots? Does something get pushed to IRQ11? What changes?

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 27 November 1999).]

[RAB]

Its OK to keep your NIC on IRQ11 with the G400. In fact, it may be the only way to make everything work correctly in some cases.

In my computer, I have to put the NIC in either slot 1 or 2 just below the AGP slot. It won't work in any other slots. Also, if your NIC is in slot 2, don't put anything in slot 1, especially a sound card or PCI modem.

RAB

[r_cap]

I thing that AGP and PCI slot 1 and 5 share the same IRQ {I can see it in my bios}. I've noticed this when I had problems running G200 in slot 1 and SB Live in slot 5. Moving SB changed used IRQ and sice this it was fine.

RC