Monday, June 30, 2008

Turning an Aging Computer into a Media Center - Part 1 - The video card

My other ongoing project, and it’s a much more complicated process then revamping a website, is to turn my old Dell Dimension 4300 into a Windows Media Center PC. This one has been a huge challenge. I haven’t built a computer since 1997 and the options for upgrading are both numerous and tricky. Hardware has changed so much over the years and I have not been keeping up. This post and the next few in this series will likely be boring to most casual blog readers, but I’m hoping to provide some information for others who might be trying the same thing. Learn from my time-wasting mistakes.

Anyway, back to my project. One of my first priorities was to install a new graphics card that would be HD capable. The problem was that the vast majority of graphics cards these days all require a PCI Express interface (also known as PCIE). I’m not sure when this became the new standard, but my computer definitely doesn’t have one of these. My current video card uses an AGP slot. All the HD capable AGP cards were 8x, while the specs on mine said it was 4x. I thought I read somewhere that they were incompatible, so I was stuck finding a standard PCI video card.

These are very scarce. In fact, I was only able to find one PCI card that was HD ready, the VisionTek 2400 (this comes in both PCI and PCI Express, so pay attention). My attempts to install the thing were mired in one frustration after another. First I tried to simply swap out my old card and put the new one in. No response, the screen was blank, and I don’t think the computer even booted up. I put the old card back in and and plugged the monitor back into it - that worked fine. I tried putting both in at the same time, the new card still didn’t work.

I did a little online research and found out that a lot of machines with AGP slots need to have those slots disabled before a PCI video card will work. So I went into the BIOS and looked for something AGP-related. There was only one, and it only allowed me to switch the video display from AGP to Auto, whatever that meant. I switched it to Auto, rebooted, and now neither card would work. I pulled out the PCI card and the old card worked again. More online reading said some people had to locate jumpers on their motherboards to disable AGP. I peered at my motherboard for quite some time and could find none. I was getting really pissed off. All my attempts at logical resolutions were being met with failure, so I finally gave up after 2 hours of wasted effort and drove to the electronics store to pick up a new one, this time an AGP card, since my Dell obviously would not accept any other kind.

I spent about 45 minutes there, staring at the wall of boxed video cards, the vast majority of which were PCI Express. I finally found a couple of AGP ones, one of which was HD ready and had the DVI output I wanted (the PNY GeForce 6200). Unfortunately it said it was 8x. I thought to myself, what if my original assumption that it wouldn’t work was incorrect? I couldn’t remember how I had come to that conclusion anyway. I asked one of the store reps for help, and according to him, 8x AGP cards can degrade nicely and work on a 4x AGP slot, but not vice versa (you can’t use a 4x card in an 8x slot).

Had I only known. I was kicking myself for my previous mistaken assumption. AGP is faster than PCI anyway, better suited for video processing. I took it home, plugged it into the slot, and like magic it started up instantly. Moral of this story? There are several actually:

  1. Check your facts before you fly off into the wrong direction.
  2. If you’re upgrading by getting various parts you’re not quite sure about, get it from a brick-and-mortar electronics store because it’s faster and easier to return. The money you save from ordering online is moot when you have to pay to have it shipped back. In fact, you lose money because most online stores won’t pay for return delivery unless the part was broken. Incompatibility does not equal broken to them.
  3. Unless your computer does not have an AGP or PCIE slot, stay away from PCI video cards.
  4. If you have the money, save yourself a lot of time by buying a damn Media Center PC. This was only Step 1 of I don’t know how many steps and it nearly took me all night.

    Posted by Geeky Dragon Girl on 06/30 at 09:19 AM
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    Categories: • Random acts of geekery