OTHER EXPANSION CARDS

Most of the "other" category of expansion cards are a variation of the ones already mentioned. If it is a new card, you generally won't have any problems installing it; just follow directions and use the enclosed installation software or drivers. For older cards, they usually are a proprietary version of a SCSI adaptor designed for a specific piece of equipment - for a tape drive unit, for example, or maybe a scanner. They usually have odd-ball (special) cable connectors and require hard-to-find driver files. Physically they install like any other expansion slot card but finding the drivers can range from frustrating to impossible.

Here are some general rules to follow for installing any expansion card

• First, study the card. Make sure that the type of card connector is the same type as the expansion slots in your computer.

• Make sure that the card will physically fit in your computer. Some cards are so long that they strike the processor cooling fan and won't seat properly - you might have to juggle cards around so they will all fit. If you do have to move cards around, do it before you install your new card. Shuffle your cards, restart your computer and let the operating system adjust itself to the new card placement, then shut down and install your new card.

• And sometimes you might have a slot open on the mainboard but still be unable to install your card because of interference from an adjacent card. What happens is that ISA cards use the case opening to the right of the slot, PCI cards use the one to the left of the slot, and where an ISA slot is adjacent to a PCI slot, only one of the two slots can be used. They both would use the same opening in the case - called a "shared" opening, so, effectively, only one of the two slots is useable at a time.

The most common problem when adding expansion cards is the allocation of mainboard resources. In common language: figuring out what to do with your IRQs, DMAs and I/O locations.

I'm going to repeat what those things are:

• An IRQ (Interupt Request) is a signal line between the processor and the device. Each expansion device or port has its own assigned IRQ to let the processor know when it has something to send - or to be alerted by the processor when the processor is ready to send something.

• The I/O memory address location is an assigned place in RAM memory where the device will always pick-up or deposit it's messages.

• A DMA (Direct Memory Address) Channel is a high speed memory transfer location and would only be used by certain devices - modems or sound cards, for instance, not a keyboard or the mouse.

Windows 98 has an easy way to look at all these things: Go to Start->Programs->Acessories->System Tools->System Information and look under Hardware Resources. That will show you the current allocations of your IRQs, DMAs and I/O locations. You will need to know the requirements of the card you want to install. If the card requirements are available, you're home free - Windows will install the card with no problems.

If you do have a potential conflict, something must be done. You can sometimes change the resource requirements on your new card, either through software or by changing jumpers on the card. If that's not possible, you can sometimes relieve the resource your card needs by adjusting the resources of whatever device is currently using it. And then it's sometime possible for two devices to share a resource - but that is very rare, in my experience. There is a Hardware Resource Conflict Wizard in Windows Help (look under Troubleshooting), but I've found that to be of limited help and I've had much better luck being pro-active - that is, resolving the potential conflict before it becomes a problem.

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