I helped (or maybe hindered) with a computer last nght.. Basically we got an ltmodem (Agere/Lucent) going on a mandrake box with kernel 2.6.3-15mdk. The MB appears to be via chipset, I'd say 3-4 years old (CPU is Athlon 1000 or 1100 from memory)
The modem connected ok, but when we started any serious surfing (read clicking beyond about a google search) the computer froze hard, i mean no mouse movement, no response from the keyboard, screen frozen, no ability to switch to console, push the reset button frozen. I suspected IRQ problems, and discovered that both USB and the LTmodem were sharing IRQ5. Now I understood that modern computers can share irq's, but maybe there are exceptions. As the USB didn't seem to work well when the modem driver was loaded I think this could well be the right track. In the bios (and i am nervous about changing this sort of setting) it is set up to auto allocate (is that the right expression) all irq's. There is a facility to "reserve" irq's. There is a separate facilty to allocate an irq to usb, although not a specific IRQ number, just allocate or not allocate. Can anyone point me to the right resolution here? I suspect I should go into the bios and set it to "reserve" IRQ5 so that it does not get automatically allocated to USB, and is available for LTmodem to grab. However I have never played with this stuff in the bios much and I am not 100% aware of the implications. Certainly turning off USB altogether is not an option for these people as they have a USB digicam. -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
