Interrupt curiosity

["José Pedro Sousa do Amaral" <amaral storeria bio ou edu>]

I have an AS 200 4/233 running Linux 5.2, KDE 1.0, and the new kernel 2.2.0.
I have noticed something that is somewhat strange for my little fuzzy
understanding of anything that goes on with the hardware. While using
XOSView, I noticed after start using the new kernel that the interrupt #8 is
always on. Furthermore, it used to display the activity status of 16
interrupts and now displays the status of 24.
Could some one shed some light in the topic of interrupt activity in
general, and why interrupt 8 is always on in particular? A pointer to
literature is also appreciated. I like to learn about these things...
ZP