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Date:      Sat, 12 May 2001 04:54:42 -0700
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        ashish_lal@agilent.com
Cc:        dp@penix.org, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: kernel boot up problem
Message-ID:  <3AFD2482.5A27EAB8@mindspring.com>
References:  <3BA28805BB22D41183A2009027AA5AFA04C5308C@axand03.and.agilent.com>

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ashish_lal@agilent.com wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the reply. I first tried to change the IRQ from
> the BIOS.  I saw that the IRQ of both the cards changes
> together. The machine has 4 CPUs and I am booting from CPU
> #1. The bios shows 4 PCI slots. The "Plug and Play OS" entry
> in the BIOS is set to "No".
> Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Since you are using FreeBSD 3.3, you will not be able to
fix this in software, unless you are willing to upgrade.

The fact that changing the interrupt in the BIOS changed
both of them tells me that you are using PCI cards, and
that you changesd the INT {A|B|C|D} mapping to the ISA
interrupt number, and didn't change the card setting.

The only way to make sure that interrupts do not conflict
is to permit them to be reassigned, if the cards support
this (many do not) and the BIOS supports it (you will have
to enable "Plug-N-Play", which will probably break other
things, since 3.3 is not a "PnP" OS).

There are two possibilities:

1)	You are sticking the card in a slot that shares
	an interrupt with another slot; for most modern
	systems, this means you are using slot 5, since
	there are only 4 PCI interrupts; if you are not
	using all the slots, then the easy answer is to
	move the card (modern systems make slot 1 use
	INT A, slot 2 use INT B, and so on -- cascading
	interrupts between slots -- and this wraps around,
	beginning with slot 5).  If all your slots are
	full, you will have to get rid of one of your
	cards, or upgrade your OS.

2)	You are using an old motherboard.  Old motherboards
	did not cascade interrupts, and relied on the card
	jumpers to select interrupts.  Given the vintage of
	your FreeBSD installation, this might be the case;
	if so, change the jumper settings on your cards, or
	upgrade your motherboard.  Note: If you are using
	an old motherboard that doesn't cascade the PCI
	interrupts, it's also extremely likely that it can
	only handle 2 bus masters (e.g. Intel Mercury and
	Saturn chipsets, etc.), so you are flirting with
	disaster, anyway.

-- Terry

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