You've never seen this before

[Spartacus51]

Well, maybe you have, but I certainly haven't (and unfortunately still have not)

Anyway, my family has a vacation cabin that's mainly used for hunting, fishing, etc. My dad decided he wanted a computer he could take up there. With a little bit of work, a lot of digging and some combining I got a frankensystem up and running. Dad went out and bought a printer and speakers to go with it.

Well he's adequate when it comes to computers so I thought nothing of allowing him to do the install of the printer when he got it up to the cabin... everything was all packed up and ready to go before he got the printer.

He returned home with some perplexing news. The computer works great, so long as the printer is not plugged in. When the printer is plugged into the computer (parallel connection) everything works, so long as the computer is booted before the cable is connected. If it's not the monitor display does not come on, aside from a dark "snow". My first thought was insufficient power to get the monitor going when the printer is running, but he says that the power can be on the printer, but the cable cannot be plugged into the computer. Now I wasn't there, and didn't get to try all the different ways of connecting and powering things up, but does anyone have any ideas? Are the parallel ports even active during post to a point they could affect video output? Nothing displays whatsoever, including the video bios screen he claims.

System Specs as I remember:

Cyrix 6x86 200
64 MB 72 pin non EDO ram
S3 based video card (virge gx?)
Lexmark printer (don't know version)
Generic SoundBlaster 16 compatible
TX based motherboard
Random old junk color 14" monitor

[Matthew1001]

A friend of mine has a wierd situation kind of like that. It is a laptop tough and it involves the mouse. The mouse must be unplugged when the computer is booting or it will go crazy and you will have no control over it.

[Spartacus51]

Is it a dUll laptop with a USB mouse?

(may be true of other brands as well, but yes, dell does have issues with notebooks and mice)

[JimmyG]

It may be a conflict with the sound card interrupt. Try putting the sound card in another slot (not slot 1).

This assumes that it is not an ISA sound card and that it is auto configurable (no jumpers). If it is an ISA sound card, set up the jumpers to use the alternate interrupt.

What might be happening is that during post with no printer connected, the bios configures the sound card to use the parallel port interrupt. Then, when you connect the printer after windows boots, it configures the parallel port to use an alternate interrupt and everything works.

When the printer is connected, the bios detects the printer and uses it's normal interrupt, then it configures the sound card and you get a conflict.

[Spartacus51]

hmm, he did mention Windows reporting an IRQ conflict sound card v. printer. Interesting idea. Will try it out this weekend.

Anyone else have any ideas?

[repo man11]

I'd do a BIOS update, if it doesn't have the most up to date one allready. And consider disabling your serial ports if you do not use them, free up some IRQ's.
Most of the time you can set the parallel ports IRQ in the BIOS, you might need to do that.