Installing Hardware cards in your computer
Here is an example using the hardest case possible; using a PCI hard disk drive controller card and two NIC Ethernet cards, for a Cable modem with LAN on a AMI BIOS motherboard.
1. The Video Card must be in the highest socket it will fit. All computer BIOS systems count from the top socket down, and video
should be the first counted.
2. If your video card is AGP, you must skip using the next socket down ( a PCI socket ) for any purpose, as it shares the same IRQ with any AGP video card above it.
3. If using a Hard disk drive controller card this would have to be the next ( second ) card down
or the first free slot down from the video card, as the hard disk drives should come second after video in
BIOS priority counting order. My favorite controller is a Promise ATA 100 with Raid ( striped boot drives ) with the latest card BIOS and drivers.
4. If using a local area network this Ethernet card should be the
third down. My favorite is a 3-Com 509C with the newest driver in the operating system.
This card will distribute your file system and your Cable modem TCP/IP signal around your house to
your other computers.
5. Next , fourth down would be the second Ethernet card, hooked to
the cable modem. This may be the card supplied by the Cable Modem company, such as a Kingston KNE100.
6. If using a older motherboard you are out of PCI sockets and Hopefully you have a older ISA card for sound.
If using a modern motherboard you will have all PCI with no ISA sockets and can use your PCI sound card last.
Configuring your PCI + PNP page in BIOS for the above scenario
On a Award BIOS
motherboard are two different settings, Resources controlled by auto or
manual, which you must set
to manual and force update ESCD, which you should enable, before leaving
BIOS each time that you wish BIOS to re-shuffle IRQ's. Each time you return to
BIOS it will be off again. If using all the cards above, with the hard disk drives on the controller card, and a IDE CD-ROM drive on the internal secondary master channel I would start with the following.
1. Onboard IDE > secondary only. Quite often on the Peripheral page.
2. PNP > On.
3. No IRQ for Video Card and first slot always
set to auto.
4. PCI slots to auto, and save and boot computer.
Note: Turn USB off ( integrated peripherals page ), if not using.
At boot, AMI BIOS will say " Checking NVRAM if cards are changed. While AWARD BIOS will say " Up dating ESCD " if force update ESCD was just enabled.
At the BIOS configuration screen, stop the screen ( pause key on keyboard ). Do not boot your Operating System, you must have the cards properly configured in BIOS first ! Write down the PCI slot numbers with the IRQ's they are grabbing. For important cards we want a 32 bit IRQ ( IRQ 9 up ). Our next step will be to return to BIOS and Manually assign the Controller card slot to IRQ 14 as our onboard IDE secondary controller should be using IRQ 15 . Try this, stopping at the BIOS configuration page and see if your controller card was forced on IRQ14. If not you may not be using the correct slot in BIOS. Some motherboards call the first slot either zero or one. Once you get the controller on 14, continue on adding IRQ 11 for the LAN, IRQ 10 for the Cable modem, etc.
Only when all assignments show properly, return to BIOS and turn PNP > OFF .
Important ! ! The
only time you ever need PNP ON is when adding or changing position of Cards.
Now boot your computer and Install the latest drivers for your new cards.
The card sockets in a tower are located at the lower rear and you should remove the cabinet left side to go to work. A older motherboard will have a lot of little white sockets ( PCI ) above a few longer black sockets ( ISA ). The PCI video card must be in the top socket, if it isn't move it up!
09/18/2004 07:52 -0500