Looks like the manual was wrong about how it charted the irq sharing on the board.

Slot 1 & 5 share with each other and the onboard audio. Slot 6 shares with one of the 3 usb controllers.

Supposed PCI slot 4 should be open it shares with the NIC chard. Prolly not a good thing. I found that slot 2 is the only slot that is open. However since I disabled usb 2.0 I can run slot 3.

I just hope I don't fall in love with something that need usb 2.0 or else I won't be able to have the UAD & the echo both on their own IRQ. :(

d./

Standard or ACPI mode? So...tell me this..what's onboard besides USB 2.0? It says the Lan and Audio are optional...I wonder if one could get this board without those fetures built in..it seems like at this point one should get mobo's without these features so that adding the PCI cards would be more configurable...
One trick is to do this..install the Echo card and get it on it's own IRQ...install the UAD card and assign it an IRQ through the BIOS!
Hope that helps..and please let us know how that motherboard is!
Opus

Graphics, LAN & Audio are both onBoard. Although onboard graphics is disabled when running AGP. So far things seem fast and stable.

I don't think installing the echo first would help much cuz the board shares the pci slots. For instance, if I put the card in slot 4 and set slot for to IRQ 5 then the NIC card will get IRQ 5 and so on.

Slot 2 seems to be on it's own.
If I ever end up needing usb2.0 then I can install a sound blaster or pci nic and have more control over what irq they get.

So...learning from you it seems as tho I will look for the board without the Lan and Audio...this way there will be no issue son the PCI IRQ sharing then...
thanks for the feedback!
Opus

I don't understand why there is so much usb all over the place. There are like 4 different controllers. 3 1.1 controllers & 1 2.0 controller. And each one ties up a diffrent IRQ. USB sucks.

d./

lol..yeah it says it has 6 USB ports on it...3x2=6(look I graduated algebra! lol :p )
I don't know why they decided on that many USB ports....I'm sure there must be a way to disable them in the BIOS?
I know you can disable the legacy USB in the P4B266...it must be an option in there somewhere.
Opus