Add-on AGP, PCI, and ISA cards installation

Part 2

This is the Diamond Stealth S220. I have left it on the static protection bag until I am ready to install the card. It is a PCI based card with 4MB of memory. It is a 3D accelerated card as well as a 2D card. I bought this for $15 new after mail in rebates so I could have a spare to use while my other video card was being returned for replacement by the factory. As of this writing there are 64MB DDR memory AGP cards that run in the $400 US range available. If all you want to do is Internet and word processing any modern card will give you descent 2D performance. Usually the added memory only benefits the 3D (gaming) performance and this is a place to save a lot of money unless you are into gaming.

When handling add-on cards never touch the gold contacts along the bottom of the cards. It is a good idea to only handle them by their edges. Static discharge wrist bands are a good investment when handling cards that can run in the hundreds of dollars in value.

There is no trick to installing these cards. Just line them up in the slot and press straight down until it bottoms in the slot. Be careful not to force the card unless it is indeed correctly lined up. There is an alignment tab in the slot called a "key" that corresponds to a slot in the bottom edge of the connector. Some wiggling end to end is allowed but try to press down straight and firm. This card is installed in the first PCI slot (the one next to the AGP slot). You will need to break out the corresponding plug in the aft part of the case in order to expose the video card connector and allow the card to be inserted.

This is the Creative Labs, Sound blaster 64AWE Value sound card. It is an ISA card that is still regarded as a solid sound card. There are PCI based sound cards that sound much better, but it is hard to beat this card for compatibility with DOS games and programs. I recommend the Sound blaster Live! Value for an excellent sounding card at a reasonable price. Check the Sound card manual carefully as setting it up in the BIOS and especially the autoexec and config.sys files entries made later is very important when using this card in DOS. If you don't use DOS based programs, installation in Windows is easy, just disable SB16 emulation in Device Manager and Windows based programs will work with whatever resources Windows assigns it. DOS programs prefer IRQ 5 and may not work if the card is assigned another IRQ.

Here is the sound card installed in the second ISA slot and the Video card in the first PCI slot. Notice the audio cable connected to the sound card and the CD-ROM drive. This is for playing audio CD's. If it is unclear which side is the left and right channels you may be able to tell with some music you are familiar with. In this case just reverse the cable orientation on the sound card to get the proper sound.

Next we will install the modem and NIC cards. The modem is a Logicode 33.6k ISA modem. This is a hardware based modem. That means there is a controller built into the card that handles all the compression and decompression work needed to transfer data across the phone line. PCI based modems are usually all "software" or "Win-modems" which omit this controller and use the system processor to do this work. It does degrade overall system performance, but makes for an inexpensive card suitable for most needs. If you are into online gaming while running 3D intensive programs than look for a hardware based modem. They will cost a bit more.

Next we will install the NIC. There are several new features on these cards. One of which is wake-on-LAN which allows you to wake a computer from suspend mode by trying to access it remotely. Our tutorial motherboard and NIC does not support this feature so there is no cable to connect to the motherboard from the NIC.

We are finally finished installing our system. The back should look like this. All the connections necessary to run our new computer are available back here. We can now close the case, plug in the keyboard, mouse, speaker, phone line, monitor, and network-CAT5 cable. When we power up the system for the first time there will be entries to the BIOS we need to make. There are so many variables from system to system and across the range of components that I dare not dive into this here.

If you make sure your HDD is set to "auto" for all your IDE devices your hard disks should be detected just fine. Some older systems may not support the larger and faster hard drives and may require a BIOS update or add-on hard disk controller card. Enable onboard floppy disk controller. If you are using a VIA chipset based motherboard like we are here it is a good idea to check their web site for instructions before installing the Operating System. For those chipsets you need to enable the USB support in the BIOS before installing the OS and then follow that with the proper AGP drivers to allow your AGP support. Failure to do this in the right order may make your life more difficult than necessary. You should enter the BIOS setup routine by hitting the DELETE key during the first stages of the boot process called POST. Once there, a good thing to do first is select "load setup defaults". Then re boot and enter setup again to make the necessary changes to support the things you have added to your system.

I hope this has been a helpful experience for you. The first time I built a system it was a bit intimidating but I got through it without damaging anything but my pride. I have grown to enjoy the part of building computers that challenges you to learn something new and I hope this tutorial has given you the confidence to try and learn something new yourself.

The funnest way possible....by doing!