MB> IRQ sharing among the SCSI controllers in this 
 MB> scenario is a very bad idea.
 TR>    It *appears* to work rather well. And network backup
 TR> occurs at night when there are no users logged on.
 MB> Every time the IRQ is triggered, the drives must check 
 MB> all attached devices.  This can be quite a lot of 
 MB> unnecessary overhead.
 TR>    If I move that Adaptec 2940 to another slot/IRQ, I will
 TR> be forced to make two 3Com 3x590 PCI NICs share an IRQ and I
 TR> am then out of PCI slots. 
 MB> I don't understand what you are talking about.  Slots 
 MB> and IRQs are not hardwired to each other.  In the 
 MB> Award BIOS, you can manually set which IRQ is mapped 
 MB> to which slot in the CMOS setup.  No physical moving 
 MB> of any cards is needed to reassign IRQs.
    Yes. But.  You can assign any IRQ to the onboard SCSI controllers and one 
PCI slot is *hardwired* to whatever IRQ you have selected for the onboard 
controllers.
    And, yes, two of the other PCI slot *must* share an IRQ ... it's whatever 
IRQ you assign, but they *do* share an IRQ.
    Do you understand?  :-)
                                                        Tom Ruddy
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