Hi all,
Well, yet another simple question has brought out loads of ideas and
thoughts!
I am still a bit puzzled, though, and will continue to watch, and hopefully
learn.
When I put my last shack PC together, I had to go and disable the BIOS
function on IRQ's, so that I could manually set which COM port went where.
Now that I have the new one, I accidentally left the BIOS function alone,
and only realised what I had done when I saw that COM 3 & 4 were sharing the
same IRQ's as COM 1 & 2.
I couldn't let this remain, simply because I have the dx cluster, PTT
control, and also FSK to consider. There were no two options that could
possibly share in this case, so I had to find a "free" IRQ.
Also, these extra COM ports are not Plug & Play, so I had to do a search for
non P&P stuff, which in turn found IRQ Steering. I'm not sure this was a
good thing, as a couple of IRQ were reserved for this, although I have
subsequently found that I can "share" such IRQ's quite happily.
I am also intrigued by Sante's solution too! A friend of mine has told me
about a similar card he got for his PC, and it only has one IRQ.
Now, this is where I show up as being thick! Just how can you get a card
that has all these COM ports, but is able to share a single IRQ? Is there
some onboard software that controls the ports, and thus controls the IRQ? If
so, how come it doesn't end up causing a crash?
Sante also mentioned soundcards, and it I use an old ISA Soundblaster 16,
which works fine.
This is getting to be an interesting thread, and I am willing to bet there
are more "solutions" to this than meets the eye!
73 for now,
Phil GU0SUP
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