Setting them IRQ's and other long lost computer maintenance pleasures ...

Who remembers memorising those pesky IRQ's (interrupt requests) - either within the operating system of via pinouts on the device using a jumper and a pair of tweezers.

Via some dark art, lots of fiddling and maybe a pair of tweezers was involved. We would faff around trying to get the operating system to use the new device we added to the motherboard.

With the majority of IRQ's reserved, we would scrabble around using 10, 11 for our network cards and/or sound devices - long before USB and on board devices rendered this issue defunct.

I recall having to teach students the IRQ architecture and helping them resolve IRQ conflicts. Now - all gone. As the march of technological advancement has moved forward.

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