Assigning Interrupts for Video Capture

[Bstansbury]

Somewhere on this forum I've seen notes about the correct way to assign Interrupt in your CPU to prevent conflicts during video capture. This had mostly to do with Sound cards.

I've looked at my System data under System Information and here is the data I found for IRq's.

---------------------
IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard OK
IRQ 2 Programmable interrupt controller OK
IRQ 3 Communications Port (COM2) OK
IRQ 4 Communications Port (COM1) OK
IRQ 5 ASOUND EXPRESS Wave Audio Device OK
IRQ 6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller OK
IRQ 7 Printer Port (LPT1) OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 9 ASOUND EXPRESS External Midi (MPU401) Device OK
IRQ 10 All-in-Wonder RADEON OK
IRQ 10 VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 10 VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 10 ASOUND EXPRESS PCI Audio Device OK
IRQ 10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 11 SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus OK
IRQ 11 Adaptec AHA-294X/AIC-78XX PCI SCSI Controller OK
IRQ 11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 14 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller OK
IRQ 14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) OK
IRQ 15 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller OK
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo) OK

AS you can see there is a lot of sharing going on and there seems to be duplicates. How can I fix this and get rid of the sharing and duplicates.

Thanks in advance.

[ggtronic]

it is adequate for Ati to share IRQ with
"irq holder for pci steering "
but sharing with audio device is not normal

chek your email

i send an Ati reply note abour irq

hope it's help

[ggtronic]

>
> Ensure the ATI card is NOT sharing an IRQ:
>
> An INTERRUPT (IRQ) is a signal sent to the central processing unit (CPU)
by a peripheral component or device, which indicates that the device
requires attention. Even though most hardware designs allow for multiple
devices to share an interrupt the interrupt program routines, (i.e. system
BIOS or operating system), are rarely designed to allow for sharing. For
this reason it is general practice to assign each device a unique interrupt.
> This issue may be related to the allocation of resources, particularly
IRQs. You want to ensure that the ATI display adapter IS assigned and NOT
sharing an IRQ. Before proceeding, please ensure that you have the latest
BIOS for your motherboard. Contact your motherboard manufacturer to confirm
that you have the latest BIOS installed (please refer to the following
section for more information on the system BIOS).
> To determine the IRQ allocations:
> 1. Open the Device Manager (right click the My Computer icon and select
Properties).
> 2. Computer should be highlighted, if not, select it now.
> 3. Click on the Properties button (this will bring a list of all the
IRQ's, and the devices they are assigned to).
> If the ATI card is NOT assigned an IRQ, enter the system's set-up (also
called the BIOS or CMOS) by pressing the key indicated on-screen to Enter
Set-up (during start-up). Note that the mouse will not function here and
arrow keys on the keyboard will navigate the user around the settings in
here. Consult your owner's manual for specifics on your system's set-up,
BIOS, or CMOS settings.
> - Ensure that "Plug and Play OS" is set to "YES" or "ENABLED" if your
operating system supports it (Windows 95, 98, 98SE, & ME)
> - Ensure that NONE of the IRQ's listed are "reserved".
> - Ensure that "ASSIGN IRQ TO VGA" is set to "YES" or "ENABLED"
> Save Changes (if any changes were made), then exit the set-up utility.
The system will reboot. The ATI card should now have an IRQ assigned.
> Ensure that the ATI card is NOT sharing an IRQ with ANY OTHER DEVICE (it
is adequate for the ATI card to share an IRQ with "IRQ Holder for PCI
Steering"). If it is sharing with any other device, then the recommended
method to reassign an IRQ to a device is to physically move the device
(card) to another PCI slot (shut down the system and be sure to UNPLUG the
computer). Either the ATI card or other device can be moved. If the ATI
card is an AGP, then obviously the shared device must be moved. If there
are no free PCI slots, then removing the shared device (as a temporary
measure to test) is recommended. Restart the computer and check the IRQ
assignments again. Repeat above steps if necessary. For more assistance in
reassigning IRQ's, you may consider contacting the system/motherboard
manufacturer.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------[/img]

[TOMMO]

If you are not having problems, leave it well alone, IRQ sharing is possible, though obviously it is better if they do not. Only worry about it if you have a problem. Your sound card is quite hungry though.

[Bstansbury]

The problem is,... I am having problems with capture. When I test the performance of my system it seems to be good enough. But when I capture at medium or high frame res. I get lots of dropped frames.

Do you know of a way to force the sound card out of IRQ10 down to share with IRQ5 which is already assigned to sound card.

[TOMMO]

It might not be the IRQ.

Are you capturing to a dedicated drive rather than a system drive?
Have you closed down all non-essential programs that ar running in the background?

These two aspects will improve the performace.

[Mirror_Image]

These are sharing the same IRQ:

IRQ 10 All-in-Wonder RADEON OK
IRQ 10 ASOUND EXPRESS PCI Audio Device OK

If you don't use both of these:

IRQ 3 Communications Port (COM2) OK
IRQ 4 Communications Port (COM1) OK

Then you could try disabling one or both of those com ports in your BIOS setup, in order to free up an IRQ that your Sound or vid card might occupy.

[Bstansbury]

The sound card wants to use 3 IRQ's but some should clearly share. If you look at my settings,... on IRQ 10, I'm sharing the sound card PCI audio function, the ATI Video card, and the USB port. This is not good.

I think that I can go into BIOS and force the USB off line, and also disable com1, which I'm not using.

I've already tried to use Device Mgr. to remove all of the sound card functions and then reboot the system after I moved the PCI card to a new slot. After reboot, windows finds the PCI card and reinstalls all of its functions, External MIdi, INternal MIdi, Joystick, PCI Audio, and Wave Audio. The bad news is that it put almost everything back in the same place. It did move Ext. MIDI from IRQ9 down to share IRQ5 and put SCI IRQ used for ACPI into IRQ9.

I'm going to try disableing com1 and see what happens.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

[zzyzzx]

If your not using your serial ports (I think nobody uses them these days) then disable them in the BIOS and this should free up IRQ's 3 & 4. Also, if you are not using your MIDI port you can disable it also (Windows System) and free up IRQ 9. I think you may have tried this unsuccessfully but I've done it on many computers. Once this is done report back you IRQ's and you probably won't be sharing any (hopefully).

[dinesh]

My Capture Card was also sharing its IRQ with some other device, but my modem was not. So I swapped the cards physically with their PCI slots and reinstalled the drivers the sharing of IRQs went to the modem and capture card IRQ was only with the IRQ steering. I was not brave enough to play too much with the BIOS. I could only marginally increase the perfomance, but thats another story.

[Bstansbury]

None of the suggestions ever helped,... but I found another solution and while I still am having problems, at least I have eliminated the possibility that it is associated with IRq's.

If I explain how I did this, hopefully it will help someone else.. but the process I went through is sooooo painful, I'm only suggesting it because,... in the end it finally workded. I can't count the number of system crashes and hangs, and BRS starts I had to do to get to where I'm at now, but at least I can prevent you from having to go the same path.

The new technology systems are totally overloaded with needs for IRq's, and I don't understand why Intel and Microsoft haven't come up with a better solution for this by this time. It is rediculous. I know, because I have a 5 Patent on MIcro computer design and I know about Interrupts.
Can you believe that the basic structure is still based on the old x86 design... what a shame. It's not like they can't come up with new Operating Systems, or new Motherboards to support new features,... like 32 Interrupts. IF you really want to here the true story on this, send me an e-mail and I'll give you some history.

Anyway, here is what you do to totally fix you system for Video operation.

Windows ME and others come with the option of setting up "Profiles" such that you can totally change the configureation of your machine at startup time to provide you only those functions you need. More importantly, to elimnate those functions that are causing you problems. For Video capture we have all seen countless post at this forum about how much processing power and performance is need to caputre high quality video without dropping frames or getting jerky results. Here is what you do.

Before proceeding on this effort, totally backup your system, as it will probably crash and leave you hung if you system doesn't do just as mine did. I used Norton's GhostPE and copied my entire "C" drive to a disk image onto a second disk. While this entire process should be very simple, if you make one mistake, or if your system does not respond the same as my WindowME,.. then you will be hung,.. and don't blame me.
Given the many OS's, processors, MOB, drivers, configureations, etc. it is a wonder that any of us can ever get to the same point.

Open up System Properties by right clicking on My Computer and selecting properties. Then click on Hardware profiles. You will probably only see one option in the list which was something like standard or basic,
or whatever. Highlight that option and click on copy. This will open a window so you can rename your "Basic" to something else. I use "Video Setup". Save this and now you can restart your system. The restart will take longer, because now it is not going to load anything into the system untile you select which profile you want. When it finally gets ready, (and this may take too or three re-boots,) select the Video Setup profile. This should really start the system just as clean as it was since all you did was copy the orginal. Hopefully it will come up.

ONce it is started, this is where the changes take effect. Now you can go into the Device Manager, select all of the functions that you know you do not want to use during Video Capture, such as Modem, Network, printers, Midi sound functions, unused Com ports, Joystick, USB ports, etc. Select each one via its properties and "Disable this hardware in this profile". Once you have disabled everything that takes up computer memory, time, or uses resources such as IRQ's, then you can select "clean up" which will allow windows to remove these items from the registry.

In doing this to my system I was able to free up several IRq's, many of which were being double shared with other functions. This way I got rid of the sharing and got my Video card on an IRQ by itself. One funny thing. Even though I disabled COM1, Windows would not free up this resource,.. it still reserved com1 for something,.. I never figured out what. I even went into the BIOS and diabled COM1,... didn't matter, it was still reserved.

To look at your system and see what is assigned to what, go to "Start", Programs, accessories, system tools, system information. ONce there, you can open up hardware, and then look at IRQ's to get the total list of you entire system. ONce this is complete, restart your system and select the "video Setup" to load everything as you have indicted. This should get your system tailored to Video Capture,... stage 1. OH you thought you were done,... Ha Ha Ha. Read my next post on this forum about "Tweaking Windows ME" This is only the beginning.

[postul8or]

> - Ensure that "Plug and Play OS" is set to "YES" or "ENABLED" if your
operating system supports it (Windows 95, 98, 98SE, & ME)

I'm having problems with everything being on IRQ 9 in windows 2000. Is this to say that Win 2000 is not a Plug and Play OS so I cannot change that setting to "yes" or "enabled" in my bios?

An answer would be much appreciated.

[Bstansbury]

This original post I made months ago is out of date now. Since this time I have solved all my problems and generated a "Users Guide" with the title of "How to tune your system for ATI capture". It deals with all kinds of ways to move interrupts on your system. The problem is, I know that this works for Windows ME,... about Windows 2000,... or XP,,... I don't know.

You'll have to investigate this yourself.