Thread: Conflicting IRQ's

I have noticed this strange problem in my setup for a while.... even since I added my VFD (serial) display.

I have an ASUS board, and it has worked well. I have a PCMCIA adaptor (Via ISA card) I also have 2 serial ports. 1 to a palm pilot or cell phone for mobil netaccess, the other to my vfd display.

It all works out to com 1 & 2 irq 3&4 then I think the pgs is set to com 3 IRQ 5 or something. I have played with it alot, tried changing them all around , I still get the same problems :

1. the vfd "flickers" the cursor jumps around , and it almost looks like its and lcd with a loose connection to the backlight. its not a loose connection. If I pause the player, the flicker stops, when I unpause it, the flicker comes back. the only way to stop the flicker is to reboot.

2. the GPS takes a REALLY long time to INIT / lock on to signal.

If I disconnect my VFD, the GPS locks on really quickly.

If I dosconnect the GPS, the flicker goes away.

I just dont understand how they could be causing a problem when they are all on different IRQ / Base add. / Com ports.

Im wondering if its something to do with the lcd plugin, ( I noticed it seemed to have a lot of bugs, maybe a memory leak??) I think the plugin is by Markus Zeuhinder ( or something that sounds like that)

I think Im going to try flashing the bios on the m-board.... I doubt that will help... but who knows.

Anny ideas ?