For the PCI bus, IRQs are not used as exclusive switches to communicate 
with different add-on cards or devices. IRQs were used in the ISA bus and 
needed to be unique. The PCI bus as a whole has a few IRQs that are 
assigned, but after that the PCI bus uses "enumeration" to address each 
card or device separately. The process of enumeration is part of the "plug 
and play" setup process.

I've never used the Linux stand-alone plug and play setup tool. Newer Linux 
distributions have far better hardware plug and play installation, but with 
my first Linux (SuSE 6.1), one needed to know exactly the hardware used.




-----Original Message-----
From:	Austad, Jay [SMTP:austad at marketwatch.com]
Sent:	Wednesday, December 26, 2001 9:32 AM
To:	'tclug-list at mn-linux.org'
Subject:	RE: [TCLUG] USB update

> console (say vt1) I would get timeout errors. Finally, I got
> a clue and
> checked /proc/interrupts. Oddly enough, interrupt 10 was
> shared by both USB
> and NVidia. "Ah!" says I, "Check BIOS!" So after a quick slap
> of the hand to
> the head, I looked in BIOS, and sure enough, USB was not assigned an
> interrupt, but AGP was. One reboot later, interrupt 10 is
> assigned to NVidia,
> and 11 to USB. And there was much rejoicing.

I have the Soyo Dragon Plus board, and my video, sound, ethernet, and USB
all share IRQ 11, and I have had no problems with it.  Is this just on
certain boards that people have trouble?

Jay
_______________________________________________
Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, 
Minnesota
http://www.mn-linux.org
tclug-list at mn-linux.org
https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list