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In a message dated 8/11/02 7:42:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
kflint@loopers-delight.com writes:
> > I'm using WinXPpro. The big downside to this so far is the fact
>that
> >WinXPpro doesn't seem to want to let you change IRQ assignments.
>
> they are abstracting as far from the hardware as possible, to make your
> life easier. I think it usually does for most people, at the expense of
> people trying to custom tune things.
Yes they are. They are doing this I think also to make it much easier
for their supposed tech support staff. If all computers are the same
configuration, then the staff can be much less knowledgable (and the
companies don't have to pay the extra money for better trained people). I
felt like the majority of people that I talked to at Gateway had no more
knowledge of computers than I do.
>
> >At least no
> >help whatsoever from Gateway's supposed tech support. With some
>software,
I
> >am getting some glitches in the audio due to the fact that the
>graphics
> card
> >(along with everything else) is sharing IRQ 10 with the cardbus slots.
>
> that is among the many legacies of a 25 year old hardware platform.
>People
> don't realize how much these legacy hardware problems of the pc
motherboard
> limit the performance of the whole platform.
>
> are you sure that sharing interrupts is even the problem? a lot of
>things
> are designed to do that. Especially in newer systems using xp/2000.
>
At the moment I am pretty convinced that the occaisional glitches
that I
get in audio are mostly due to a conflict with the graphics card. NI's
Kontakt has given the most problems. When I have Kontakt's rack view
disabled, I don't have any glitches (except for the occaisional overload).
I
have also noticed some audio glitches in SoundForge6.0 that lead me to
believe the problem lies with some kind of IRQ conflict between the
Graphics
card and the cardbus slot (Layla24).
> > From
> >what I have read so far, the changing of the IRQs occurs in the BIOS
(WinXP)
> .
>
> you probably need to turn off ACPI somehow, which would probably be a
>bad
> idea in a laptop. You might even need to reinstall windows with some
> different options, which I would be scared to do.
ACPI? Sorry I haven't learned that one yet. I'll look it up. When I
first got my laptop, I re-installed windows so I could get rid of a lot of
the unnecessary stuff that Gateway put on there. I don't recall seeing any
options that might have helped me with this particular problem. I was
actually expecting to have an option to reconfigure some things (like
IRQs).
There appeared to be 3 open IRQs on my laptop before I re-installed
windows.
I was really hoping (fantasizing I guess) that I would have access to all
of
that when I started from scratch.
>
> > I'll be taking that adventure this week. I'm thinking that I might
>have
> to
> >purchase a new BIOS for my laptop. Anyone have any good suggestions on
this?
>
>
> I don't think you can purchase a new BIOS from a third party, can you?
> Programming the BIOS is a very specialized and difficult thing, and
> requires deep detailed knowledge of the hardware that only the
manufacturer
> knows, as well as deep knowledge of all the legacy pc crap. you might
>be
> able to get an updated one from the mfr.
>
Well, I have found this site:
http://www.mrbios.com/biosupgrades/upgradenow.cfm
They do sell BIOS upgrades. They have a BIOS agent app that will report my
BIOS info along with whatever upgrades that they might be able to sell me.
I
will try this later this evening.
> > No matter what laptop you buy, call the manufacturer up and
> >get them to tell which cardbus and Firewire cards they are using in
>their
> >units.
>
> a nit, but they don't put cards in a laptop. It's a chip on the
> motherboard. many different card and motherboard manufacturers may use
>the
> same chip.
>
> kim
Thanks for clarifying that for me. I was thinking more along the
lines
that the various ports were actually plug-in cards.
Marc