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i'm looking at my owners manual (ASUS p4b266) and i'm trying to make sure i understand what the chart on page 2-14 (IRQ Assigments for this Motherboard) really means. before i try and contact ASUS support i thought i'd try here first. i understand what a shared interrupt is but as i look at this chart the top ledgend says A thru H. What does this represent? and where it says "used" as opposed to "shared". what does this tell me about the item it refers to?
>> to anyone who is using this mobo, what slot selection and bios configs(if any) did you use to achieve as much IRQ isolation as possible.

Comments

Opus2000 Thu, 05/16/2002 - 05:49

Ok...A-H=1-8
So, Slot one and five share A and E or 1 and 5...
got it? Don't worry about it that much.
What I did was this...disabled both Serial ports..changed parellel port to EPP(force of habit from the earlier days..but still reccomended) AGP Aperture set to 256, and of course set the clock to 2.133GHz! :p
I also disable the legacy USB 1.1 ports...I like to use the USB 2.0 just for shits and giggles..eventually I will get a USB 2.0 drive for backup reasons.
When I boot up I go ahead and disable the Asus Enhanced USB and one of the NEC USB ports in teh device manager. I only need one USB port and not four! So this leaves me with two available physical slots to use...plus opens more IRQ's.
From there I add whatever cards needed...Audio and a firewire card..that's it. I put the firewire card in slot 2 and the audio card in either slot 3 or 4..I add each one at a time and making sure each time I boot up that the IRQ's are fine.
Opus

anonymous Thu, 05/16/2002 - 07:43

Ok...A-H=1-8 :roll:
got it? Don't worry about it that much.
What I did was this...disabled both Serial ports ..by this you mean the COM ports?

changed parellel port
i currently have a ZIP100 drive on the LPT1/parellel port. should i be concerned?
to EPP(force of habit from the earlier days..but still reccomended)

AGP Aperture set to 256,OK
and of course set the clock to 2.133GHz! - maybe after i get it all up and running correctly.

I also disable the legacy USB 1.1 ports...I like to use the USB 2.0 just for shits and giggles..eventually I will get a USB 2.0 drive for backup reasons. i currently use a midiman portman usb midi device. the question is will in operate on usb 2.0. i think so.

When I boot up I go ahead and disable the Asus Enhanced USB and one of the NEC USB ports in teh device manager. I only need one USB port and not four! So this leaves me with two available physical slots to use...plus opens more IRQ's.
From there I add whatever cards needed...Audio and a firewire card..that's it. I put the firewire card in slot 2 and the audio card in either slot 3 or 4..I add each one at a time and making sure each time I boot up that the IRQ's are fine.
Opus

thanks. i'll give it a try

knightfly Thu, 05/16/2002 - 08:32

Hey Dan - doin' fine so far. Some clarifications, in order asked:

Serial port = Com port. a holdover from when almost all modems were outboard and ran off a serial port, plus serial can run longer length cables than parallel. Why is unimportant for normal usage any more.

If you're using the parallel port, don't disable it. The general rule for audio machines is, if you don't need it, kill it before it kills you. What you can do, if you don't use the zip drive when you're makin' music, is create a separate hardware profile for music and disable the zip ONLY IN THAT PROFILE. Otherwise, don't worry about it.

USB 2.0 is supposed to be fully backward compatible with USB 1.1, so any USB 1.1 device should work with a 2.0 port, only not at 2.0 speeds. If you only have 1 or 2 USB devices, it makes sense to use the 2.0 port and disable any others not used, in order to keep as many resources open as possible.

Go for it, sounds like you're almost there... Steve

Fozz Fri, 05/17/2002 - 04:09

Dan,

I downloaded the PDF version of the "Asus P4B266 User Guide" back in January, I think. On the second page at the top it says E884, First Edition November 2001. On its page 2-14 it has two tables:
#1: Standard Interrupt Assignments
#2: IRQ Assignments for this motherboard.

In that second table, for PCI slot 1 and 5, for example, it shows "shared" in column F. Column F also shows shared for "Onboard USB 2.0 Controller" and "Onboard audio".

Is that different from what you see in the real manual. If so I will download a new copy?

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