eeek IRQ madness

under start / run / then type => msinfo32 (& enter) I was able to see IRQ conflicts. IRQ 5 on my AMD rig is sharing 12, yes 12! items. No wonder I keep getting random results whenever I try to set up my 2 pc network.

Here's what's on IRQ 5
GFX card
3Com Lan
Nvidia MCP (south bridge)
Nvidia USB control
Nvidia PC systems management
ACPI IRQ PCI steering X 6

IRQ 11
firewire
Nividia soundstorm
Nvidia USB control
ACPI IRQ PCI steering X 5
How would I go about putting the 3Com Lan onto a less busy IRQ channel ?

What operating system?

98se

One thing that can help is to disable any unused ports in your BIOS settings. If you don't use the serial or parallel ports, disable them to free their IRQ's. If your BIOS has a setting for assigning an IRQ to USB, and your USB will work without it, disable it. If you use a USB mouse, you may be able to free an IRQ by disabling PS/2 mouse support in the BIOS.

Upgrade to an OS that supports the extended IRQs availble from the ACPI interface.

Linux, Win2K SP3, or WinXP come to mind.

Discovered an old protocol - NetBeui, it's self configuring and also has network and domain control protocols, it assists TCP/IP so I've got the best of both worlds. It's not affected by the IRQ conflicts.