What are IRQ, DMA & Address Ports? - Soundcard Memories [Byte Size] | Nostalgia Nerd

If you owned an IBM Compatible PC during the 80s or 90s then you'll likely know the ordeal of setting up peripherals such as Sound cards. Before diving into a game, you had to make sure that it was setup to recognise your Soundblaster or Adlib card. This was done through an I/O Port address, an IRQ and a DMA channel. This video explores exactly what these things are, how they relate to your PC and why Plug & Pray was introduced to make our lives easier.

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[philscomputerlab]

That was excellent! I miss those days to be honest. Everything was locked in once you configured your cards and it was transparent. No funny business going on in the background. I always kept my system quite simple and had little issues. Disabling unused resources on the IO controller like printer port or second com port helped a lot.

[Danielau]

I'm so glad we don't need to deal with port and IRQ conflicts any more. Thanks for reminding me of the nightmares we used to face. =P

[stevezpj]

I both miss the days of poring over my config.sys and autoexec.bat configurations and am also incredibly glad those days are over. People who get started with computers these days have no clue just how much harder they were to use back in the day. Getting enough memory for Doom, a SoundBlaster AND mouse drivers on top of that... I always ended up turning to Memmaker.

[Rouxenator]

Loved this ! Reminded me of my first "sound card" and ESS Audio Drive 1688 in my dad's 486 DX2/66

[Fazeofp]

OOOOooo.... I remember having to deal with DMA and IRQ channels when I was a kid. I dont know the exact details but since I was like 10-11 years old when games like Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of the Triad came out, I didnt know what they were, I just fiddled around with them until they worked. Maybe this is why it was so fickle. :)

Now 20 years later, I kind of sort of understand how DMAs and IRQs work. Maybe. Mind you I'll still choose the "sound blaster" option when configuring the sound for old DOS games because that's what made the sound for these old DOS games work when I was a kid, so its safe to say that by now its like the standard for Windows 7. :P

Good video

[ForrestBobHD]

Watching this, as I unbox my eBay Sound Blaster 2, it just hit me why I lobe these old things. The knowledge, the learning curve. It is so much more fulfilling than building a modern rig.

Glad I didn't HAVE to grow up with this tho 😂

[laharlk]

Plug and Pray indeed! Just had to disable PnP Aware OS on my MMX's bios and then change the ethernet card on pci slot 2 to irq 12 to make the sound card work properly! Whatever is up with this M571 board, it doesnt like giving an IRQ to the VGA and the sound card at the same time. Or maybe its because of the network card but in any case it took me more time that it should have to figure this out!

[binkman]

Great video and I mean all of them. Love your content and delivery. Thanks!

[MindOfCrim]

What are IRQ, DMA & Address Ports?

[lightsier]

Awwww man... those days You probably should have just tossed in Kernel conflicts as a freebie of nightmares in the 90s. Also your bit at the end made me lol, good one!

[MichaelAStanhope]

A220, 5, 1, 5
Still remember after all these years the port config for an SB Pro!

[StuartHughes-gp]

I think I spent my whole time gaming in my youth not knowing what these acronyms meant or did. Just played around with the numbers/accepted the defaults. 😂

[marcuscowles]

Absolutely love these vids, so informative but in a very relaxed way - no intense training or pressure. Have you thought of doing a spin-off series of sci-fi nerd or something for cutting edge IT technology but in the same casual and enjoyable fashion?

[ms-dosman]

For a DOS build, I often look specifically for non-pnp parts, just to stay in full control of all IRQ and DMA channels. Back in the 90s I didn't know as much about how it worked so I ran into trouble too. Especially with some weird combo cards.. like a sound card and modem in one.

[totallymady]

Great content, nice and informative while clear and uncluttered, unlike my desktop

[stoojinator]

Anyone who finds this nostalgic clearly was never the LAN leader in multi-PC setups at gaming days. I used to spend HOURS getting everyone's PCs working with LAN cards (most people didn't own them, so we'd have to install new or loaner cards). More often than not I wouldn't get to play because of this. It was fun, but bloody painful!

[chatboxguy]

This is one thing with new computers I don't miss. IRQ errors or having to shut your damn computer down to fix your mouse keyboard issues.

[DeanJ]

Aaaah that DUKE3D setup screen brought back some memories haha

[ghelyar]

5:25 Polling is pronounced "pole-ing", as in polling station

[andreassjoberg]

Pressing the "caddy eject" on a CD-Rom/DVD-Rom drive will still generate an IRQ. This is a handy way of getting out of frozen programs when the ctrl-alt-del will not work. Nifty hack to know, it works more often than not...