MikeC said:
Hi, Can any one help ?
I'm trying to install a new video card (xtasy 9200 SE 128mg pci,
powered by ATI) in my pc. I get it installed ok but when it installs it
grabs irq 16, instructions say it will only work on irq 10 or 11. Irq 11 is
already in use but 10 is free, but when I go into properties the ability to
change it is grayed out. OS, WinXP home.
Mike,
On modern PCs, Windows XP uses the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power
Interface) specification for handling resource allocation for cards.
Compared to the older Plug-and-Play spec, ACPI works a lot better. However,
when in ACPI mode you can't usually change resources for devices - which is
why the setting you see is greyed out.
ACPI also provides 31 interrupts (IRQs) versus the 15 offered by older
device architectures. A properly-designed peripheral - which the ATI
graphics chips most certainly are - will work happily on whatever IRQ it is
given. I have a Radeon 9800 AGP card here and it's working perfectly on IRQ
16 on an Intel motherboard.
I venture to suggest that the instructions are incorrect - I've certainly
not seen for quite some time any PCI/AGP cards that "must" have a particular
IRQ. Why are you trying to change the IRQ, other than because of what the
instructions say? Have you encountered specific problems in using the card?
If so, can you provide details? If there is no specific problem, then just
install the card & the latest drivers (if in doubt, use the generic Catalyst
drivers from
www.ati.com) and see what happens.
Hope this helps.
