Expansion card?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim Marlin
  • Start date Start date
J

Jim Marlin

I have a new HP Pavilion a1020n computer. Dont like it, but I am stuck
with it. No agp slot and no pci express either. Is there a card that
will let me use an agp video card in a pci slot? Also is there a card
that will let me add an ide hard drive? The HP has ATA drive installed
and I want to use ide hdd from my old computer? Any work arounds. The
only pci video card is only 128 meg memory. Also, how to disable on
board video card permanently to add video card?

Tnx in advance.
 
If both your ide controllers have two devices each already, you can get a
pci ide controller for another drive. An AGP slot is a faster buss than pci
so I think you'd be better off just getting the best pci graphic card you
can. On some systems disabling the onboard graphic can be tricky, but look
in the bios for a pci/onboard choice and change it
 
Jim Marlin said:
I have a new HP Pavilion a1020n computer. Dont like it, but I am stuck
with it. No agp slot and no pci express either. Is there a card that will
let me use an agp video card in a pci slot? Also is there a card that will
let me add an ide hard drive? The HP has ATA drive installed and I want to
use ide hdd from my old computer? Any work arounds. The only pci video
card is only 128 meg memory. Also, how to disable on board video card
permanently to add video card?

Tnx in advance.
Click to expand...
I picked up a USB 2.0 Drive Kit (External drive enclosure) at my local
Walmart store for $40 yesterday during some kind of local discount
promotion. I wanted to recover some data stored on some older IDE drives
with out having to open the chassis and unplug something else.

So far I have tested it with older IDE drives from three different
manufacturers and all three worked just fine. Windows XP found them on the
first try and made them available for use.

You can read about the products the company sells at www.adstech.com. I
noticed that they offer the same case in Fiberwire and one that has both USB
and Fiberwire ports.

The drive case has a front panel that can be removed if you want to install
an IDE DVD or CD drive. Just make sure the drive fits as some DVD/RW drives
are quite long and space might be a little tight when using them.

You won't be able to boot from the drive unless your BIOS supports booting
from USB but I expect that is not something most people would want to mess
with anyway.

I was able to recover data on NTSF and FAT formatted IDE drives. The only
thing I had to change on a drive or two was to make sure the drives were set
up as a drive 1 or single drive configuration and not drive 2 or using the
drive select option. The IDE to USB interface built into the enclosure took
care of the rest.
 
I have a new HP Pavilion a1020n computer. Dont like it, but I am stuck
with it. No agp slot and no pci express either. Is there a card that
will let me use an agp video card in a pci slot?
Click to expand...

No.

Are you trying to game with it? The onboard video should be
sufficient for typical 2D uses, including DVD, etc.

If you are in need of gaming-level performance, your choices
are quite limited but there are some (faster but not modern
performance level) cards out there.


Also is there a card
that will let me add an ide hard drive? The HP has ATA drive installed
and I want to use ide hdd from my old computer?
Click to expand...

Doesn't it have 2 IDE channels? If so it supports 4
devices, you should be able to simply add the old drive and
confirm it's detected OK in the bios... then do what you
will with it.


Any work arounds. The
only pci video card is only 128 meg memory.
Click to expand...

The 128MB of memory isn't as big a limitation as the GPU or
that it's running on the PCI bus. There's no magic solution
here if you need top-notch gaming performance, you'd just
have to bite the bullet and replace more major parts of the
system like the motherboard (and then case, etc, if a
replacement won't just drop-into that system... and quite
possibly the power supply too, as what they included to
power an all-integrated system is fairly likely to not be
sufficient for a higher-end video card.
Also, how to disable on
board video card permanently to add video card?
Click to expand...


I'm not familiar with that model system, but presuming it's
semi-modern, you'd either have a bios setting or you'd only
set the bios to use the PCI card as the primary display
adapter, then if the original is still showing up in
(Windows' Device Manager?) then you'd disable it there.
 
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