What is an IRQ ?

An IRQ is really an interrupt Request line. In the case of expansion board , and it is an actual contact(finger) on the board, and it is a corresponding pin in the sockets on the bus connected by a trace on the motherboard . A device sends a interrupt to the motherboards interrupt circuitry by changing the voltage level on the interrupt request line.

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This voltage change acts via interrupt controller circuitry to interrupt the processor to service the device needing the CPU attention.Simply put, if , for example , a serial port is receiving data from a MODEM, it can wait until its buffer overflows for the CPU to come to its assistance.

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The CPU will then temporally store the program and data it is working on in an area of memory know as the stack and load a routine (program) to service the interrupting device, service the device(move the data out of its buffer ) and then restore the program and then restore the program and it was previously working on and resume what it was doing.

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A CPU can be interrupted many times a second a marvelously complicated affair when one considers that a CPU can be working on one interrupt request and be interrupt in this task by still another IRQ request of a higher priority , and that it usually does all of this juggling without losing a beat or data

IRQ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

USUAL FUNCTION / DEVICE System Timer Keyboard 2nd IRQ controller COM2: COM1: Free ( used by LPT2: or sound card) Floppy disk LPT1 Real Time Clock (RTC) Free ( May be labeled/appear as IRQ2)

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IRQ 10 11 12 13 14 15

USUAL FUNCTION/DEVICE Free ( often used by sound cards) Free PS/2 mouse Math coprocessor on CPU (used) Primary IDE Secondary IDE

DMA
DMA stands for Direct Memory Access. DMA allows computer peripherals to communicate directly with the computers RAM memory, by passing the processor. With DMA, peripherals work faster and use less processor power.In modern computers, DMA access is negotiated by the computers BIOS during startup, or by the operating system.Computer have a limited number of DMA channels available, but modern computers rarely run out.

DMA Bus line

0 1 no 8/16 bit

Typical Default Use

Memory refresh Sound card(low DMA)

Other common uses

None SCSI host adapters, ECP parallel ports, tape accelerator cards, network cards, voice modems. Tape accelerator cards ECP parallel ports, SCSI host adaptor ,tape accelerator cards, sound card(low DMA), network cards, voice modems, hard disk controller on old PC/XT

2 3

8/16 bit 8/16 bit

Floppy disk controller none

4 5 6 7

no 16 bit only 16 bit only 16 bit only

None:Cascade for DMAs 0 - 3 None Sound Card ( high DMA) None None SCSI host adapters, network cards Sound cards (high DMA) , network cards Sound cards (high DMA) network cards