>  I run a bbs, i have 2 machines one for personal use, and one
 > for the bbs. The personal machine was a Triton P100. I
 > upgraded from the P100 to an IBM 6x86 P166+, therefore i want
 > to replace my bbs motherboard, which is a 5x86 P133 OPTi 486,
 > with the Triton P100. (does this make sense now?) The reason
 > i mentioned Triton and OPTi is because i want to upgrade the
 > bbs board, and this is where the problems start!

I got it now. Precis: You have an IRQ4 problem on your Triton P100 running
Warp for a BBS. Clear, concise, to the point.

 > RJ> This query rightly belongs in Z3_TECH, but being a reformed denizen of
 > RJ> that area I'll give it a go. It seems to me that you probably have the
 > RJ> IRQ settings for the PCI ports set incorrectly, and that the trouble
 > RJ> is with the SCSI IRQ conflicting with the multi serial card. Ignore
 > RJ> the IRQ4 error, it's probably higher. Ensure that whatever IRQ the
 > RJ> Adaptec is on isn't also available to the ISA bus. DOS will allow you
 > RJ> to get away with IRQ's overlapping, but OS/2 is a lot more critical of
 > RJ> this.

 >  Why do you say that? I thought OS/2 Hardware was the correct
 > place to enquire about hardware problems? But anyway...

This isn't a hardware echo, it's about an operating system called OS/2. You
have a hardware problem. There is no such thing as "OS/2
hardware". Anyhow, onward ...

 > RJ> It also isn't a good idea to replace motherboards on a machine with
 > RJ> OS/2, as the installation is made for the set of hardware that are
 > RJ> present when it installs. I'd suggest at least re-running install over
 > RJ> the current setup, once you establish nothing else is wrong.

 >  I already tried installing over the old OPTi install, and i
 > get a trap when the bars and dots appear, and start moving,
 > therefore i can never finish the install.

[Repeat of my suggestion above deleted to save bandwidth.]

 >  Hmm well i disabled the IRQ's as someone else already
 > suggested, without success. The Adaptec is on IRQ10 and
 > nothing else uses that except that card?

 >  As to the ignoring the IRQ 4 error, it must be doing
 > something, as the mouse stops working, and that is on com 3?
 > If you have any other suggestions that i could try without
 > trying to install again, id appreciate it, as a fresh install
 > seems to crash every time!

Some basic info. The standard IBM hardware setup is:

COM1    IRQ4    3F8
COM2    IRQ3    2F8
COM3    IRQ4    3E8   *
COM4    IRQ3    2E8   *

* Note: COM3 and COM4 were not defined in the original IBM PC
specification, so the last two are a "pseudo-standard". 

What this means is that some software knows about them, and some barfs. In
most operating systems, presumably OS/2 included, if they are used in any
other order than this you will have problems. There are, for instance, many
problems associated with getting Windows to run an internal modem
succesfully on COM4 while maintaining DOS compatibility. I solved this one
years ago, but you're not asking about Windows. :)

In any half decent hardware design they don't use interrupts anyway, the
ports are polled. If any two devices share an interrupt in OS/2 you'll get
the problems you're describing unless certain precautions (see below) are
taken. Also, if you assign COM3 before COM1 and COM2 the result will
probably be the same, as OS/2 likely won't know what to do.

Check that the mouse driver isn't being loaded before the serial driver
that comes with the multi-serial card, and also check that you have
interrupt sharing enabled. Also ensure that there are no unassigned COM
ports in the sequence 1,2,3,4 etc and that no two pieces of hardware can
likely be used at the same time which share an IRQ (just to be safe).

If none of that bears fruit, start looking at address assignments on the
multi-serial card for conflicts with things like sound cards. But then
again, you did say it was all working on the other motherboard, didn't you.

If all else fails, put the 586-133 back in. The P100 won't be much faster anyway.

Rob

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