fryguy365

rloew: Thanks for your reply. Ive never dealt with I/O before, so I'm clearly a bit of a dummy here. After looking at your response, I realized that i needed to reserve 0320-033F, not 3200-33FF. Thanks so much for your help! fryguy365

Hi I am trying to install an old ISA card into a Win98SE machine, and am having a problem in finding available I/O addresses. The ISA card is not plug and play. The card's default hex address is 320 hex, but can use 100-120, 120-140, 140-160, 160-180, 180-1A0, 1A0-1C0, 1C0-1E0, 1E0-200, 200-220, 220-240, 240-260, 300-320, 320-340, 340-360, configurable by dip switch. The problem is, the IDE controller is very greedy, and takes several addresses within each usable range: device manager shows IDE controller using many, many addresses as "Alias intel 82371AB/EB PCI master..." "Alias of primary IDE controller (dual fifo)", etc. see the images below. My question is, is there a way to prevent the PCI IDE controller from taking up all the usable I/O addresses, either via the BIOS, via win98, or even via means of hardware (can I run win98 from a scsi HD for example) Or, what is causing the pci ide controller device hog all the I/0 addresses, and is it fixable? +++++++++++++ useful data below +++++++++++++ the computer seems to run fine. remarkable how fast win98 actually boots up! The ISA card is a digidata 1200 digital acquisition card from axon instruments. Early 1990's vintage. The IRQ, DMA and I/O must be free before driver install (I have reserved the required IRQ, and 2 DMA in device manager, no problems, no conflicts) the motherboard is a P6BX-A+ (or clone), with i440BX- intel chipset (it's a generic fleet computer). its a Pentium 2 400 MHz, 256MB RAM (faster processors cause timing errors with the digidata 1200) the IDE controller is an Intel 82371AB/EB PCI bus Master IDE controller, there is one primary IDE HD (~13GB fujitsu), with no slave, one secondary IDE generic cd player, no slave. Bios is Award v4.51pg I have updated the chipset drivers and ide controller I have changed the IRQ and DMA settings in bios to legacy I have indicated a non PnP system in Bios I have disabled all non essential ports in bios (parallel, serial, 1, serial 2, ps/2 mouse) I have set the IRQ ports for the PCI controller to legacy (this causes problems) I have tried to reserve the I/O addressed (320 -340) I want but get conflicts with pci ide controller thanks for any help fryguy365