1-AGP and 2-PCI boards - 2nd PCI board will not work

[Guest]

Hi AllTrying to get the 3rd monitor working. This is a little Rage Pro 8mb PCI board. XP has the driver and finds the board but the error stated while looking at the board in Device Manager states: Device could not be started (Code 10). I had put the board in the PCI slot right next to the AGP card and then I remembered when I put the first PCI board in that slot that it didnt work either. So I removed the board and installed it next to the other PCI Video board (slot 4) and the same error. I then tried to force an IRQ at the bios level and that did not work either. So Im at a standstill and out of ideas. So I have turned to the first place I always go. Right here. I would appreciate any help and suggestions. RegardsBobG

[Guest]

try setting the pci vga to primary in the bios.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Try this test....Pull the second monitor card, then see if you can get the third to work. Might be able to identify a conflict between the two. Some VGA cards are very picky about the IRQ's they use...-John

[Guest]

No help on switching the Primary card to be the PCI. I will yank the other card and see if that helps. If it does, then what?TksBobG

[Guest]

Hi BobLet the agp card to be the primery By tryal and error method try to swapp the cards in different slotsthats makes a differentI got 3 pci adaptors with the primery agp working in my system just by swapping slots and finding the proper combinationAs well there may be a conflickt between the pci cards--you can try to substitute one of them with different type Joseph

[Guest]

Thanks Joseph I will give it a shot. I tried changing the IRQ at the bios level for each of the PCI cards but that did not work. So its not an IRQ conflict. Im not sure what moving the cards would do but then again Im not a hardware guru. Will try but not till tomorrow as Im needing to fly for a while as Im tired of messing with the box.TksBobG

[Guest]

Bob ,from mine and not only mine expirience sometime just swapping two same type of cards beetween them can make a differenceso keep trying Wishing you luckJoseph

[lefteris 70]

Bob-I had tried to do this awhile ago without success. The reason is simple (as I read it in some hardware forum or other):There are PCI cards that want to be the "master" VGA card. These cards do NOT function at all with other PCI VGA cards in the same machine. Unfortunately, all the "older" PCI VGA cards fit into this category.I finally went with two (identical!) GeForce2 MX 200 PCI VGA cards. They are cheap, and do not argue about being "master". ;-)Simple advice: Throw away the older cards... they won't work anyway...

[Guest]

Hey LefterisI thought it was going to turn on that way. Whats the going price on the MX200's? I already own the Voodoo3(pci). Do you know it they care about being a master? If so, I would only have to buy one card.Thanks againBobG

[Guest]

I take it that you are using the PCI mx cards for the instrument panel only. Is that true, and if so, how well do they work? What kind of resolution can you get out of them?Thanks,Rob

[Guest LarryJ_KMSO]

I never understood why moving a PCI card would make any difference whether it worked or not until I saw this table from the ASUS P4PE board which I have on order. The note at the very bottom says it all!Shades of COM1 at 3F8 IRQ4 COM2 2F8 IRQ3Like a bad penny, the non-IRQ sharing pci cards, still cause havoic.Larry(Hopefully there's a snipped jpeg page here! If not, the note at the bottom says "When using PCI cards on shared slots, enusre that the drivers support "Share IRQ" or that the cards do not need IRQ assignments. Otherwise, conflicts will arise between the two PCI groups, making the system unstable and the card inoperable."

[Guest]

LarryNice of you to post the charts. I dont understand what the A-H on the one chart signifies?

[Guest LarryJ_KMSO]

My interpretation (which could be totally wrong!) is that the chart shows that per Column F, PCI slots 1 and 5 share an interrupt so (I'm guessing again) that if you have cards in slots 1 and 5, they better know how to share an interrupt presumably through their drivers but possibly through the design of the board. Notice this sharing applies to USB controllers also.This chart is for the Asus P4PE mother board but with past systems, I've encountered this quirkiness where a board would work in one slot and not in another. Extrapolating here (perhaps more than just a bit) if my older other mother boards had similar arrangements, then the past problems are somewhat understandable (at least to me!)Larry