This is a long one ... be prepared.

I've just upgraded to a new ATX case and motherboard.  I ran into quite
a few problems and it took a full day to get it working properly.
Everything appears stable and working fine at the moment but I'm not
sure if some of the results are going to get me into trouble later or
not.  I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice or
explanations for some of the things that happened ...

The new system is:

Antec ATX case / 250W power supply
TekRam P6Pro-A+ slot 1 motherboard / Award BIOS /  VIA Apollo Pro+
chipset
Celeron 466MHz CPU - socket 370 with IWill Slot 1 adapter (running
normal settings)
128MB RAM in two 64MB PC100 DIMMs running at 66MHz
Western Digital 8GB hard drive running at UltraDMA/66 - only drive on
this channel
Toshiba 44x CD-ROM running at DMA33 - secondary master
Memorex CD-RW - slaved to CD-ROM
Banshee PCI video card
3Com network card connected to cable modem
NetGear network card connected to local network on four-port 10Mbps hub
Creative Awe64 ISA sound card
Single port parallel ISA card at LPT2 with tape drive connected
Scanner and printer daisy-chained off motherboard parallel port at LPT1
Mouse on COM1 - COM2 enabled on motherboard but nothing connected
USB ports disabled

I installed by shutting down the old system, moving hardware to be
re-used in the new system to the new case (hard drive, ISA and PCI
cards), restarting in Safe Mode, deleting all devices in Control Panel,
shutting down and restarting my system to let Windows reinstall
everything.  The system would lock up on boot.  Removed all the cards
except video card and it worked OK.  After all the devices were found
and installed, tried putting back the cards one at a time until it
failed again.  Found that problem #1 below was the cause of the lockup.

1. When the NetGear card was first installed, it was assigned IRQ12.
The system would lock up on boot, just after the Windows startup
display.  The manual mentions that IRQ12 would be used by the on-board
sound chipset if I had one and says that any driver installed on this
IRQ must be "sharable".  I'm not sure what they mean by this.  I finally
had to work around this problem by assigning IRQ12 to the ISA bus so PNP
would not try to use it.

2. On the second try, the NetGear card was assigned IRQ9.  This is the
"redirection" IRQ.  When I tried starting my system this way, something
clobbered my Autoexec.bat and my registry.  Windows restored a backup -
wiping out all the changes I had made up to this point.  I did this
again before deciding this was probably a bad idea and disabling IRQ9 by
assigning it to the ISA bus.

3. This caused the NetGear card to take IRQ5 and displace my sound card
which needs to be on IRQ5 for some programs to work.  Assigned IRQ5 and
IRQ7 to ISA bus so they would be used by ISA cards.

4.  NetGear card moved to IRQ10 - the same IRQ as the 3Com network card!
Apparently this does not cause a problem as everything seems to work but
I've never run into this before.  Is this going to cause a problem some
day?  Can other IRQs be shared by other PCI cards?  Is there some way to
force IRQs to be shared like this between given devices rather than just
a random assignment?  I've not enabled the USB ports yet as I have no
USB devices at this time but would like to get a USB scanner and would
need an IRQ for it.

  IRQ #           Device
  0    System timer
  1    Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
  2    Programmable interrupt controller
  3    Communications Port (COM2)
  4    Communications Port (COM1)
  5    Creative AWE64 16-bit Audio (SB16 compatible)
  6    Standard Floppy Disk Controller
  7    Printer Port (LPT1)
  8    System CMOS/real time clock
  10    3Com EtherLink 10/100 PCI For Complete PC Management NIC
(3C905C-TX)
  10    NETGEAR FA310TX Fast Ethernet PCI Adapter
  10    IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
  10    IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
  11    3D Blaster Banshee PCI/AGP
  11    IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
  13    Numeric data processor
  14    Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
  14    VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller
  15    Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
  15    VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller

  DMA #           Device
  1    Creative AWE64 16-bit Audio (SB16 compatible)
  2    Standard Floppy Disk Controller
  4    Direct memory access controller
  5    Creative AWE64 16-bit Audio (SB16 compatible)

5. Several times on startup Windows would find a unknown device and try
to install software for it but not be able to find anything so I would
wind up with an "unknown device" entry in Control Panel that I could not
figure out how to identify.  It eventually went away so I assume it was
just a problem with something not being installed properly because of
the above problems.  Any way I can identify an "unknown device" like
this?

6.  I notice that sometimes sounds will be choppy - especially when the
disk is being accessed heavily at the same time.  I blame this on DMA
being shared between the disk and the sound card.  Is this probable?  Is
there some way around this without slowing down the disk?

7.  A really minor problem - Before the upgrade the active title bar on
Windows would fade from a dark color on the left to a lighter shade on
the right.  It's just a solid dark color now.  I see under display
properties, appearance where I can set two different colors for the
active title bar and it does appear that way after I change it ... until
the next restart and then it's right back to a solid dark bar again.
Anyone know what is happening here?

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