Charlie wrote:

Paul & Russell,
Thanks for the advice. I do have a Winmodem as a backup for my DSL. My
scanner is a USB device. No SCSI or other oddball boards on my machine. Do
you consider a USB mouse better or worse than a PS2 mouse?  I recently
switched to a USB model in hopes of freeing up the IRQ used by the PS2 port.
Am I more likely to have a problem using the one ISA port on my machine
for my sound card versus a PCI card?

You cannot free up the PS/2 port IRQ, since I believe the IRQ is shared by the
keyboard and mouse (you *do* still want a keyboard, right?  :-)  I have a USB mouse,
but I plug it into the PS/2 adapter since my 4-port KVM(*) switch only handles PS/2
interfaces.  BTW, the pure optical (not opto-mechanical) mice are definitely worth
the upgrade if you do any gaming.  It really sucks to get toasted because your
d*mned mouse ball got stuck at an inopportune time...

Why are you trying to free up the PS/2 IRQ?

I strongly recommend you get an external modem (assuming you have an available
serial port; if not then you could be opening a new can of worms by installing a
serial card).

As for the sound card, since the card is ISA I assume it is old.  That may or may
not be an issue: it depends on how popular the card was new.  It may be that its a
clone card that Win2000 is recognizing as "SoundBlaster compatible", but if the
sound card's compatibility is incomplete or unstable, you'll get flakey behavior.
Sound cards are pretty cheap (presuming you stay away from the
latest-and-greates-all-the-bells-and-whistles model); you could try "upgrading" to
see if that solves the stability issue.

Regards,
Russell Kent

(*) KVM switch: keyboard/video/mouse switch.  A box that lets one control several
computers using one keyboard, mouse, and monitor, albeit only one computer at a
time.

OK guys this is getting too far removed from rotary stuff so perhaps
Russell will set up an "upgrade your PC" online help list.

Paul Lamar
 
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