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Posted: **Thu Nov 27, 2003 9:14 am**

I must be confused about this. Maybe someone can help.

Win XP apparently ignores my BIOS IRQ settings because when I look at the hardware setting for both of my Pulsar boards, they no longer occupy the same IRQ. Can't seem to find a way to force XP to assign unshared IRQ's to either board. Any suggestions?

I think I had them both set to IRQ5 in BIOS.

Posted: **Thu Nov 27, 2003 9:53 am**

Sounds like the famous "ACPI" option. Is your XP setup as ACPI or "Standard"? If former, then XP will assign all IRQs regardless of your BIOS settings, and you're pretty well stuck with it. But nothing should be sharing IRQs. ACPI works on Mboards that support it (most boards made in last 2 years). My 2 cards are on 20 and 22 (not even the order they're slotted) and no problems.

/dave

Posted: **Thu Nov 27, 2003 10:00 am**

yeah - acpi

now I think I understand.

I saw some other threads here on the subject. Something about switching to standard mode. Not sure I understand why I need to do that. What is it with this ACPI anyway? What does it do and why do I need it or not need it?

Will switching to standard mode interfere or cause any headaches with other applications?

I noticed that one of the boards is sharing an IRQ with a USB controller or something like that. IRQ5 not even used at all - the one I would prefer to use for both boards. Strange.

[ This Message was edited by: krizrox on 2003-11-27 10:03 ]

Posted: **Thu Nov 27, 2003 11:27 am**

What motherboard do you have - if XP is sharing IRQs then maybe your mboard isn't ACPI (and/or APIC) compliant.

Switching an ACPI system to Standard is a bit of a headache. It's apparently possible (there's some info on this forum) but it's best to do a clean reinstall of XP and use the F5 key when Windows installer asks about SCSI drivers near the beginning of the process (what a bunch of arcane bullshit, eh?)

/dave

Posted: **Fri Nov 28, 2003 1:59 am**

if you are seeing irqs over 15 it means that your motherboard is better quality and has an "apic" chip which actually assigns a hardware IRQ to everything seperately it is a much better way to do things than the 1970s era cascaded interrupt chips.

however if you are actually having problems you can usually turn apic off in the bios and make it work the old school way.

windows will probably re detect everything when you do that.

also try turning PNP OS to "off" although in most bioses ive seen it does not actually work

[ This Message was edited by: Neutron on 2003-11-28 02:01 ]

Posted: **Fri Nov 28, 2003 8:41 am**

On 2003-11-27 11:27, dbmac wrote:
What motherboard do you have - if XP is sharing IRQs then maybe your mboard isn't ACPI (and/or APIC) compliant.

Switching an ACPI system to Standard is a bit of a headache. It's apparently possible (there's some info on this forum) but it's best to do a clean reinstall of XP and use the F5 key when Windows installer asks about SCSI drivers near the beginning of the process (what a bunch of arcane bullshit, eh?)

/dave

I have an ASUS PT4533-C motherboard. There is a BIOS option to select APIC (which I have enabled). Is this the same as ACPI?

I'm not particularly interested to do another install from scratch unless it's absolutely necessary. Is that my only other option at this point? Honestly, I haven't noticed any problems with Pulsar yet but I haven't really put the hurt on it yet with XP. I installed XP to get to Sonar 3 which I'm still learning. I thought the whole point of this APIC was so that nothing would share IRQ's. I see no reference to an IRQ5 in Windows so XP isn't even using it for anything at the moment. Seems strange that I can't assign my Pulsar boards to this open IRQ without jumping through hoops.

To Neutron: thanks I'll try your suggestion if all else fails.

[ This Message was edited by: krizrox on 2003-11-28 08:43 ]

Posted: **Fri Nov 28, 2003 10:16 am**

krizrox wrote:

I have an ASUS PT4533-C motherboard. There is a BIOS option to select APIC (which I have enabled). Is this the same as ACPI?

No, but they both do have a bearing on IRQ allocation.

ACPI is "Advanced Configurable Power Interface", whereas APIC is "Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller"

Under ACPI, there's a lot of IRQ sharing across PCI bus devices.

Under APCI (modern motherboards w/ Win XP), the IRQ range is extended. IRQ sharing can still happen, but AFAIK this isn't as detrimental to audio performance as having a computer configured as ACPI under Windows 2000). Each (PCI) slot can be allocated a separate IRQ number as I understand it.

As well as IRQ sharing, ACPI concerns itself with general system power management, 'hibernation' modes, 'soft' shutdowns etc. (e.g. since changing my W2K box to be non-ACPI, the only way I can power it off is by flicking the physical power switch 'round the back on the PSU - soft power-offs no longer work).

Royston

Posted: **Fri Nov 28, 2003 10:26 am**

It's strange that you're sharing an IRQ with your ASUS PT4533 set for ACPI. I don't think Pulsar sharing IRQ with USB is a good thing.

Try setting your BIOS IRQ settings to Auto - maybe the IRQ5 setting is forcing the USB controller to follow the Pulsar board. Just a hunch.

/dave

Posted: **Fri Nov 28, 2003 3:56 pm**

On 2003-11-28 10:16, Counterparts wrote:
(e.g. since changing my W2K box to be non-ACPI, the only way I can power it off is by flicking the physical power switch 'round the back on the PSU - soft power-offs no longer work).

Royston

Have you enabled APM in the Display properties dialog?

Also, if you hold the front power button in for > 4secs it should force a power down.

[ This Message was edited by: bassdude on 2003-11-28 15:57 ]

Posted: **Fri Nov 28, 2003 8:27 pm**

On 2003-11-28 01:59, Neutron wrote:
if you are seeing irqs over 15 it means that your motherboard is better quality and has an "apic" chip which actually assigns a hardware IRQ to everything seperately it is a much better way to do things than the 1970s era cascaded interrupt chips.

however if you are actually having problems you can usually turn apic off in the bios and make it work the old school way.

windows will probably re detect everything when you do that.

also try turning PNP OS to "off" although in most bioses ive seen it does not actually work

[ This Message was edited by: Neutron on 2003-11-28 02:01 ]

In my BIOS, I can only select from either APIC or PIC. I changed the setting to PIC but then XP would not boot up. Changing the IRQ settings to AUTO had no effect. Maybe I'll just not worry about it for now. I'm not noticing any problems (yet). Still, would like to understand this.

Posted: **Sat Nov 29, 2003 3:03 am**

Hi Krizrox , i have a P4T533C myself, and even if it support ACPI, i found out i had better stability without.

Also, you HAVE to disable USB2 on that board. It's not in BIOS, look into the manual, there is a jumper to move or remove if a remember well to disable the USB2.

The reason to disable the USB2 is that it use a NEC chip, and not the chipset, and that chip use lots of pci bandwidth, and also share on the PCI slot2.

Once this is done, you can use safely the pci slot 1,2,3 & 5 without any sharing happening at all.

Rock solid here. You have PC800 rdram or PC1066 rdram? just to know, there no incidence there anyway. I have PC1066 Kingston rdram.

My Luna2 is in pci slot1, and Pulsar1 is in pci slot5. I did setup the bios so those two slot are sharing on IRQ9 voluntarily.

My cw setup is set to be at 3ms ulli, the lowest possible ulli for 44.1khz.

I can use the Asio2 32-64 driver with more that 32 channels without a single problem from the day i bought that board.

Oh, and yeah, you need the set PnP to off in bios. This is mandatory.

[ This Message was edited by: marcuspocus on 2003-11-29 03:05 ]

Posted: **Sat Nov 29, 2003 10:13 am**

On 2003-11-29 03:03, marcuspocus wrote:
Hi Krizrox , i have a P4T533C myself, and even if it support ACPI, i found out i had better stability without.

Also, you HAVE to disable USB2 on that board. It's not in BIOS, look into the manual, there is a jumper to move or remove if a remember well to disable the USB2.

The reason to disable the USB2 is that it use a NEC chip, and not the chipset, and that chip use lots of pci bandwidth, and also share on the PCI slot2.

Once this is done, you can use safely the pci slot 1,2,3 & 5 without any sharing happening at all.

Rock solid here. You have PC800 rdram or PC1066 rdram? just to know, there no incidence there anyway. I have PC1066 Kingston rdram.

My Luna2 is in pci slot1, and Pulsar1 is in pci slot5. I did setup the bios so those two slot are sharing on IRQ9 voluntarily.

My cw setup is set to be at 3ms ulli, the lowest possible ulli for 44.1khz.

I can use the Asio2 32-64 driver with more that 32 channels without a single problem from the day i bought that board.

Oh, and yeah, you need the set PnP to off in bios. This is mandatory.

[ This Message was edited by: marcuspocus on 2003-11-29 03:05 ]

All righty then - now we're getting somewhere. Thanks for the tips marcuspocus. However, this raises more questions.

If I disable USB2 on the motherboard (yes I see the jumper), does that mean I can't use the USB ports? Or does that simply mean it will no longer support the 2.0 specification? What's the difference?

I need at least one of the USB ports for my USB MIDIman 4x4 port.

I'm using the PC800 type of RDRAM. Do you think I would see a performance incease by using PC1066 instead?

My two Pulsar boards are installed in slots 2 and 5 which explains why the slot 2 board is sharing with USB right?

PnP is off in BIOS.

So, do you think I should set APIC to PIC in BIOS and then reinstall Windows XP in standard mode?

btw: I have no other PCI cards installed. Just the two Pulsar boards. I have the other PCI slots disabled in BIOS.

Thanks again!!!

[ This Message was edited by: krizrox on 2003-11-29 10:16 ]

Posted: **Sat Nov 29, 2003 1:48 pm**

afaik,disabling usb2.0 still leaves 1.1 functioning.

Posted: **Sat Nov 29, 2003 1:51 pm**

marcus,that info should be in tips and tricks.....

Posted: **Sat Nov 29, 2003 4:23 pm**

You still can use the usb1.1, and the midiman 4x4, in one of the two first usb plug on the back.

I think there is 'maybe' a small increase in samples loading speed for sts for example, but it's not that obvious, i think

Yeah, the pulsar in slot2 is gonna be unshared after you disable usb2 using jumpers.

Let the bios in APIC mode. well mine is in apic mode anyway

[ This Message was edited by: marcuspocus on 2003-11-29 16:24 ]

Posted: **Sun Nov 30, 2003 9:18 am**

Thanks again guys.

I disabled USB 2.0 on my motherboard and changed Windows XP to Standard Mode. That solved the IRQ sharing problem.

You can switch from ACPI mode to Standard mode without having to reinstall everything. The instructions to do this are detailed in the Pulsar manual (and I found similar instructions elsewhere on the web). The only minor problem is that you have to reinstall various drivers again but that was just a minor annoyance.

Posted: **Mon Dec 01, 2003 4:35 am**

bassdude wrote:

Have you enabled APM in the Display properties dialog?

Also, if you hold the front power button in for > 4secs it should force a power down.

Hi bassdude

I've tried the 'hold the buton down' trick, but the daft machine just sits there grinning at me.

I'll try enabling "APM"!

That's the Advanced Power Management stuff, right?

(To be honest, I'm happier about the box being really turned off when I put it to bed).

Royston

Posted: **Mon Dec 01, 2003 2:33 pm**

On 2003-11-30 09:18, krizrox wrote:
You can switch from ACPI mode to Standard mode without having to reinstall everything.

yes, but can you do activate APM now?

Posted: **Mon Dec 01, 2003 6:19 pm**

Sorry - don't mean to be dense but what is APM? What does it do exactly? Why do I need it? Some type of power management?

The only thing I care about is whether I can turn the PC on or off. I know I can turn it on. And when I select Shut Down from the OS, it turns off. What else do I need to know about it?

To my knowledge, all other power management options have been disabled.

Posted: **Thu Dec 04, 2003 5:55 am**

APM = Advanced Powermanagement - Maybe some sort of ernergy saver, but who cares? Using a Pulsar is not a laptopsolution, I´d say...

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WinXP & IRQ's