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By Ruffin Bailey Published: 6/10/99 |
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 It's not tough to install PCI cards, but I still managed to find out a few things I wish I'd known before I started. |
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In the last shade tree article, I started deciding what kinds of upgrades I was going to give my venerable StarMax 3000/180 via its three PCI slots. After much deliberation and hard thought, I decided I needed to add an ethernet port and some sort of 3D video acceleration. I ordered a Farallon ethernet card and MicroConversion’s Game Wizard/ Voodoo2 to meet these needs. Since I placed my ethernet and Game Wizard orders, MicroConversions has gone out of business, and the support for my nice new Game Wizard is in serious doubt. I apologize for this, but even though I had an idea that this might happen (noted here), I didn’t expect MC to go out of business so soon! Even though you might not want a Game Wizard, in spite of the fact that the price for the last few Wizards will hopefully start dropping quickly, many of the problems I had installing my cards should be useful knowledge when installing most any card. And now, off to the races… At the top of this article, you’ll notice a label picture of my motherboard. There’s really nothing we’re going to do today that needs to be done by a professional if you’re also willing to risk some damage to your computer. This may sound harsh, but if you get a grounding strap (you should be able to purchase one at most any computer shack) or touch the power supply repeatedly as you do your work, you shouldn’t have any trouble. I usually make sure I pick my feet up off of the carpet and touch the power supply about as often as my heart beats. To this point I haven’t had any trouble with my computer after a number of additions and upgrades, but I do want to stress that any time you open your computer, you could very easily mess up something really important. Just be careful, and don’t come crying to me when your computer’s kaput! ;^) In the picture of my StarMax’s motherboard, take note of the PCI slots (2), the Farallon ethernet card (1), and the L2 cache (4). Installing the ethernet card (1) was a snap. First I used a Phillips-head screwdriver to remove the protective cover over the bottom PCI slot. This is just a small piece of metal that is placed on the computer’s case allowing the PCI card’s ports to reach some fresh air, and is easy to locate. I then took the ethernet card out of its protective sleeve, holding it by its corners, and plugged it into the lowest PCI slot on my motherboard. There is a small lip on the outside of the PCI card that needs to be fitted into the computer’s case. If you can’t get it to fit, take a look at the other protective covers like the one you just removed; they have the same lip and should help guide you. The last item on the checklist is to make sure the PCI card is fully seated in the PCI slot. It took a pretty good push to get the Farallon card to firmly click into place. My advice would be to push good and hard, but stop short of forcing the card. Once you’ve got the ethernet card installed (or, better yet, one shut down before installing the card), you’ll need to add the software that’s going to allow your operating system to locate and use your new hardware. For the Farallon card, there was a floppy with a couple of items that needed to be copied into my System Folder. I dropped these into the System Folder, dragging them from the floppy, and then rebooted. Of course, as soon as you check everything out and it seems like it’s working, you’ll need to run to your card’s vendor’s web site and look for the infamous driver updates. For some reason, it’s too danged tough for the vendors to reburn a CD or insert new floppies into their boxes with each new update, so the software you just opened with your new card usually turns out to be about three updates behind what’s now available. That said, I haven’t even checked Farallon’s site and the software that came with my ethernet card is working great. The Game Wizard’s installation begins in the same fashion as the ethernet card (it is important to get the newest drivers from MicroConversion’s site), but there are a few important decisions you’re going to need to make that I didn’t figure out until after I’d started my installation. My first problem was that the Game Wizard was huge! The Farallon card was a 7" PCI card, and the Game Wizard is a "full-sized" PCI card which is about 11". Though installation for me was no problem, StarMax users might be able to see the potential pitfalls of full-sized cards from the image below.
In this picture, I’ve highlighted three colored lines. The light blue/aqua line shows the end of the Farallon ethernet card. The dark blue line foregrounds the edge of the L2 cache. The red shows the edge of the 11", full-sized Game Wizard. The most obvious problem would have occurred if I had already installed two cards in the two top PCI slots and then tried to add the Game Wizard where the ethernet card currently lives. The Game Wizard would not have fit because of the placement of the L2 cache. And here’s the real catch: The L2 cache slot is the only outlet for StarMax owners to add a G3 upgrade. I’ve emailed Vimage about the spacing to see if a full-sized PCI card could fit in the top PCI slot along with Vimage’s G3 upgrade, but have yet to hear anything in reply. I seriously doubt you could add the G3 upgrade and use two full-sized cards and as I pointed out, three full-sized cards are completely out of the question even in a stock StarMax. The bottom line being that the G3 upgrade card is going to be taller than the L2 cache, and it’s going to take up more space in my desktop StarMax that could have been used by PCI cards. Another concern I have with my Voodoo2 card is heat. A few of my WinPC buddies have added fans within their cases to deal with the Voodoo’s extra heat. Add that heat right beside a new G3, and I’m a little, though not overly, concerned. The final consideration for video card buyers is the issue of Macintosh vs. VGA monitor ports. Until the clones, pretty much all Mac users used monitors with different cords than their IBM counterparts. My StarMax, however, has a VGA monitor port (like WinPC’s and new blue and white G3 towers) and though I originally used an old Mac monitor with adapters, I’ve recently upgraded to a VGA monitor. I told MicroConversions that I was using a StarMax 3000, but I didn’t get the adapters I needed. Here’s yet another picture showing that if the cord doesn’t fit, your installation must quit:
As you can see, I was in quite a predicament. The patch cord that fed my StarMax’s 2D video out to the Game Wizard was a Mac-out to VGA-in cord. I actually had the adapter for VGA-out to Mac-out, and this solved the patch cord problem. Had I not had the adapter, I could have run to a computer store and grabbed a normal VGA-out to VGA-in patch cord that WinPC’s would typically use. (Just fyi: I’ve been told that’s it’s very important when purchasing a patch cord to keep it very short to reduce degradation of the 2D video signal.) B of these quick-fixes could have been avoided with a VGA-to-VGA cord straight from MicroConversions, which is what I’d expected. Now MicroConversion’s Game Wizard is a Mac-specific product, and not just because of the Mac-specific patch cord. The video out on the Game Wizard is also a Mac-out, which really had me sunk because of my VGA monitor (see the image above with the VGA cord atop the Mac-out port). This adapter is not anywhere as easy to find as a VGA-to-VGA patch cord! After calling several chain stores, I finally started jumping from computer shop to computer shop asking if they had a Mac-out to VGA-out adapter for sale. With a great deal of luck, I managed to find one right up the road at Computers and Networks of Charleston for $5! Certainly not new, and they were probably happy to get rid of what to them was junk, but not nearly as happy as me to have the adapter in hand. For the most part, this adapter hassle won’t be an issue for most of you. Most of the cards on the market now-a-days seem to be 2D/3D combos, and won’t need a patch cable. But do remember to ask if the card you buy has Mac-out or VGA-out, and remember if your monitor doesn’t have that sort of cable to ask for the proper adapters. And if you do get a 3D-only video card to ask about the patch cord and video-out on the card itself as well. This was enough to get Tomb Raider II running in 3dfx mode and for me to host a QuakeWorld game on my StarMax on a LAN via ethernet, but to play Dark Vengence and 3dfx Quake (client) was going to take some work. In part 3 of the shade tree series, I’ll let you know what kind of performance increases I experienced and what sorts of driver issues I encountered, and also install an extra 64 megs of RAM! In the meanwhile, next couple of weeks I plan to have a review of Civilization 2 (not exactly a 3D-accelerated game, but certainly a game that’s sucked up about the last week and a half of my life) and, if we’re lucky, a guest reviewer telling us why Tomb Raider Gold is a better game than Tomb Raider II. Hope to see you then! | ||||||
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