Jason Thorpe writes:
>On 09 Jul 1998 15:47:42 -0400 
> "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Are there any objections to my changing the defaults in GENERIC from
> > irq 7 to irq 5 for the sound blaster?


>That would be fine... esp considering IRQ 7 is usually used by the
>parallel port!

Heh. I just asked Perry exactly this.  From Perry's reply I inferred
it may be a bad idea, but I dont understand why.

I recall asking exactly this about 2 1/2 years ago, when Stanford CS
got a massive shipment of motherboards with SB clones configured to
irq5, and parallel ports on irq7.  (even back then it was clear that
was the emerging standard.)  As best I recall, Charles had some
objections then, but I never understood what they were.

Perhaps someone should ask Charles what they were. Even so, could the
problems really be any worse than the conflict with currently-shipping
hardware we have now?