forcing a pci nic to use a different irq?

[Matthew Garman <garman@uiuc.edu>]

Hello:

I have a two computer home LAN set up.  I cannot get the machines to see
each other (i.e., neither can ping the other).

When I try to ping the other computer, it looks as though information is
leaving, but not coming back, since the activity lights on my switch flash
when I run ping.

According to the Ethernet HOWTO, the most common cause of this problem is
an IRQ conflict.  This seems believable, because...

cat /proc/interrupts

           CPU0       
  0:      42726          XT-PIC  timer
  1:       2024          XT-PIC  keyboard
  2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  4:      12012          XT-PIC  
  5:          3          XT-PIC  soundblaster
 11:       5986          XT-PIC  sym53c8xx, eth0
 12:       4799          XT-PIC  PS/2 Mouse
 14:          2          XT-PIC  ide0
NMI:          0 
ERR:          0

You can see that both my SCSI controller and my ethernet card live on IRQ
11.

How can I force this card not to use IRQ 11?  My ethernet drivers are
compiled into the kernel.  So I tried doing this from the LILO prompt:

Linux ether=9,0,0,0,eth0

It totally ignored the parameter, and loaded on IRQ 11 anyway.  So then I
tried adding the following line to /etc/lilo.conf

append="ether=9,0,0,0,eth0"

Then I *ran lilo*, rebooted, but the result was the same: the card still
loads on IRQ 11.

The card *used* to work fine.  In fact it just started having this
problem, and I can't figure out why.

Thanks for any help,
Matt

-- 
Matt Garman, garman@uiuc.edu
"I'll tip my hat to the new constitution, Take a bow for the new revolution
 Smile and grin at the change all around, Pick up my guitar and play
 Just like yesterday, Then I'll get on my knees and pray..."
            -- Pete Townshend/The Who, "Won't Get Fooled Again"