RE: [Thinkpad] Tweaking IRQ assignments for PCI Graphics Card in SelectaDock III

Just an update on this topic, since I didn't hear from anyone on the list
about it.

I did manage to get a separate and unique IRQ assigned to the nVidia
graphics card. The way I did this was by uninstalling all the drivers,
adjusting my list of IRQs reserved for PCI Steering so that there was one
which was empty, pulling out the card and moving it to a different slot,
rebooting and then re-installing the drivers. I can't tell if pulling out
the card and moving it just gives the PCI Steering a chance to "rejig" the
IRQs, or if the particular CardBus Controller I'm using is somehow tied in
to the same IRQ as a particular PCI slot in the SelectaDock III (and moving
the card to a different slot then caused it to try to find a different IRQ
than the active CardBus Controller).

Anyways, all that is really neither here nor there since it did not solve
the periodic system freezes. I've also now tried reverting to an earlier
set of drivers for my graphics card, but that does not solve the problem
either.

So now my current working theory is that the system freezes are caused by
one of two things: either overheating (it's been particularly hot and humid
in my office for the past week or so, and the system does not ventilate as
well when it is docked as it does when it is undocked), or simply that I'm
trying to push too much information through this old bus and once in a while
it just can't handle it or it is a bit buggy in its implementation (it
wouldn't surprise me to discover that the SelectaDock III just doesn't
handle certain configurations that well, especially when you start to pile
on the additional components).

I think the next thing I'll try is to get some sort of additional fan that I
can set up inside the Dock box in order to assist with cooling. After that,
I might consider looking for an older graphics card and seeing if I can get
something a bit slower to work instead of this nVidia card -- I know that
there are a few cards which the 770 BIOS was apparently tweaked for in order
to make sure they were compatible.

Any other suggestions would be welcome.

Phil.

-----Original Message-----
From: thinkpad-admin@stderr.org [mailto:thinkpad-admin@stderr.org]On
Behalf Of Philip Kiff
Sent: July 3, 2003 11:45
To: thinkpad@stderr.org
Subject: [Thinkpad] Tweaking IRQ assignments for PCI Graphics Card in
SelectaDock III

I've got a PCI Graphics Card installed in a SelectaDock III with a ThinkPad
770E attached and I am trying to figure out how to assign a unique IRQ to
the graphics card in Windows 98SE.

<snip>

The problem is, I don't know how to assign a unique IRQ to my video card.

<snip>

I can get the cards to move around to different IRQs simply by changing the
IRQs which I have assigned to PCI Steering -- even just changing the order
of the IRQs I assign to PCI Steering will reshuffle the assignments when I
reboot. But no matter what I do, the CardBus Controller and the dang Xircom
modem/ethernet combo moves to the same IRQ that the video card is on. I can
even free up an additional IRQ and add it to the list of PCI Steering IRQs,
but the system will simply assign one of the other shared devices to it, or
even leave it empty, without assigning anything to it, despite the fact that
the video card is sharing with the modem/ethernet combo card.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Is it even likely that I can solve my
freezing problems by doing this?

Philip Kiff
Canada

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Received on Mon Jul 7 09:32:48 2003