🚀 go-pugleaf

hgriggs@mpx.com.au (Henry Griggs) writes:

>The mouse is a bus mouse, but the IRQ range is 2-5. The modem is on
>COM4, so that's IRQ 3 gone. (Can't put the modem elsewhere, as COM1
>and COM2 are on the motherboard with UART 16450s, COM3 is a 16450 and
>COM4 is the 16550.) Network card has a range of 2-5. Soundblaster uses

If it is a 16bit net card, it is a two minute operation to solder
a wire from the card edge at IRQ 10,11,12, or 15 (your choice) and
take the other end to the common of the jumper block that goes to
the device's IRQ output.

Same thing applies to your COM3 & COM4 if they are on a 16bit multi-i/o
card. Many people do this to get COM3 & COM4 on separate IRQ lines
than COM1 and COM2.

>So if I want to put a serial terminal on the system, it has to go
>through COM3 or COM4. COM4 is the modem and is un use a fair bit. COM3
>shares with the mouse and I only use that for X-Windows, so that looks
>to me like a likely candidate for sharing. Which is what I do. So if I
>want to use the serial terminal, I uncomment the line in /etc/inittab
>and reboot. If I want X-Windows, I comment the line in /etc/inittab

And Reboot? "kill -HUP 1" will do what you want. See "man init".

>As for the high range of IRQ channels, IRQ 8 is in use by the clock,
>IRQ 9 is the cascade from IRQ 2, so they are both unavailable to me.
>10 is free, but nothing I have lets me use it. 11 is used by the
>Soundcard too (it's greedy - uses two IRQ channels). 12 is the
>scanner, 13 is unavailable as the coprocessor uses it, 14 is used by
>the hard disk contoller, and 15 is free, but nothing I have lets me
>use it.  If I'm wrong on any of this stuff, please let me know so I
>can make adjustments.

Even if you have an 8 bit card (eg. bus-mouse, COM/LPT card) you can
still easily get them to use IRQs 10->15. You get an old junk 16bit
card and cut it off so all you have left is the portion that plugs
into the motherboard slot with the contacts on it. You touch solder
your wire onto the IRQ line of your choice of this stub and plug it
in behind your 8bit card, and run the IRQ lead to your card as above.
Its a bit hackish, but it will work.

Paul.