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BOOT CAMP 441 (12/09/06)
Build your own Vista-Ready PC, part 6
If you’ve
been following the DT Mk II PC saga you should now have in front of you a
powerful and flexible Windows XP computer that can turn its chips to just about
any task. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement and this week, in the
final instalment, I’ll suggest a few simple hardware modifications, and deal
with one of the design goals set out at the beginning of the series, namely
running Windows Vista (still on course for launch in January 2007), in all of
its glory.
But first
those mods and we’ll begin with a way of overcoming a shortcoming of the ASRock
motherboard we’ve used. I suspect that like me, a lot of users will have one or
more IDE hard drives, from an old PC for example, that they would like to use
in their new PC, to add extra capacity or to copy or backup data. The
motherboard has provision for up to four SATA drives but there’s only one
ATA/IDE socket. This can support two drives but one channel is used by the DVD
drive and many users will want to add a second optical drive (more about that
in a moment), which means there is no way to connect an IDE drive to this
machine.
The solution
is to fit an IDE Controller card. Basic twin socket cards, which support up to
4 drives (2 channels per socket), are available from on-line sellers for only
£10 to £15. Make sure that you get an ATA133 ‘Controller’ card, rather than a
similar looking ‘RAID’ card; many of them will work but some do not support
independent drive operation.
Installation
is very straightforward; the card fits into a spare PCI socket. Remove the
blanking plate behind the socket first and once the card is seated fit the
retaining screw. Connect the card to the drive using the supplied ribbon
cable (don’t forget to set the drive to
‘slave’ mode). Finally plug in the drive’s power cable and switch on the PC.
You will be asked to load the driver software, which is included on the supplied
CD, once that’s done the new drive(s) are ready to use.
Having made
provision for your IDE hard disc drives the next item on the agenda is a second
CD/DVD drive. This will come in handy for discs that you need to access on a
regular basis and it will make copying discs a great deal easier. You may well
have a spare drive or you could cannibalise an old machine but even if you have
to buy one they are not expensive and a fast DVD-ROM drive should only cost you
around £10 to £15.
The last
essential add-on is a multi-format memory card reader. The one used on the
prototype was purchased from a local computer fair for the princely sum of £10
but they’re widely available from PC parts retailers for only a little more;
the one used has a black fascia, to match the case. It can read all popular types
of memory card (XD, Smart Media, SD/MMC, Memory Stick and Compact Flash) and it
has a USB 2.0 port, which is compatible with pretty well all flash drives and
USB peripherals.
The reader
fits into one of the case’s spare 3.5-inch floppy disc drive bays (adaptors are
also available for 5.25-inch bays) and the cable connects to the spare USB
‘header’ on the motherboard. Fitting takes around five minutes, no extra
software is required and the card slots appear as extra drive letters on the
Windows Explorer directory tree.
Finally, as
promised some advice for installing Windows Vista, and the following changes
will also improve the look and speed of Windows XP graphics. In theory Vista
will run on almost any PC with at least a 1GHz processor and 512Mb of memory
but the eye catching ‘Aero’ graphics require a video adaptor with at least
128Mb of memory. The motherboard’s on-board video adaptor reduces cost and
complexity by ‘sharing’ the PC’s system memory and by default it is set to
64Mb. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons we specified 1Gb of RAM for the
DT Mk II; if it had 512Mb of RAM and shared video memory was set to the maximum
of 192Mb there would be a noticeable impact on performance, moreover Windows
Vista will not install on a PC with less than 512Mb.
The shared
video memory configuration is in the BIOS Setup program. Press the F2 key
immediately (and repeatedly) after switch on. When the Setup menu appears
select the Advanced tab and then ‘Chipset Configuration’ (instructions for the
keyboard controls appear on the right of the screen) and change or verify the
following settings.
Onboard VGA
Selection should be set to Auto; DVMT Mode Select should be ‘DVMT Mode’ and
DVMT/Fixed should be either ‘128Mb’ or ‘Maximum DVMT’ (use Maximum for best results).
Press F10 to Save the Changes and Exit the BIOS, reboot and you are now ready
for Vista.
NEXT WEEK – Ten Top Freeware
programs
JARGON FILTER
DVMT
Dynamic Video Memory Technology
-- system used on motherboards to manage and balance memory utilisation
RAID
Redundant Array of Independent
(or Inexpensive) Discs -- technique for sharing or copying data on multiple
disc drives, usually on server computers, for improved reliability or increased
speed and throughput
SHARED MEMORY
Motherboards with built-in
video adaptors use a proportion of system memory or RAM. A PC with 512Mb RAM
and ‘shared’ video memory of 128Mb, for example, would have only 384Mb of RAM
of system memory available
TOP TIP
You know what it’s like
setting up a new PC; you spend ages installing your main programs, then hours
hunting down all of your favourite utilities and tools. I have created a CD-ROM
with all my must-have programs, but if you haven’t got around to doing that yet
have a look at Google
Pack. It's an eclectic collection of software, obviously with a strong
Googlish flavour (Google Earth, Desktop, Toolbar and so on) but with some of
our favourites as well, including Mozilla Firefox, Picasa, AdAware and Adobe
Reader. You can pick and choose what you want and it’s all conveniently
packaged together in one download.
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© R. Maybury 2006, 0609
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