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NIC Installation

Now open your computer again.  This time you are actually going to handle the stuff inside.  This raises the danger of damaging CMOS chips.

Your primary line of defense against zapping CMOS is the grounding strap.  Attach one end to the metal frame of your computer.  It must be attached to a conducting part of the frame.  Metals are conductors, so if you are sure something is metal, tie the grounding strap to that.  Don't tie it to something that feels warmer to the touch than the rest of the frame.  A conductor should feel cool (unless the air temperature in your working area is really high).  Tie the other end of the grounding strap around your wrist. 

If you have used the fabric softener trick, you are less likely to be carrying static electricity.  So you may tell yourself that you don't really need the grounding strap.  However, have you heard of Murphy's Law?  It states that "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."  I have experienced Murphy's Law from time to time:):)

Next, put the plug and play cards inside open slots in your computers.  This sometimes requires that you shove hard to fully seat a card in its slot.  You can tell the card is properly in place when the metal piece on the end is snugly in place where you can screw in the bolt that holds it to the frame.  If you have trouble making a card slide all the way into its slot, use that bright light source to see what the problem is.

If you drop a bolt inside the computer, be CERTAIN to get it out.  Otherwise it might cause an electrical short, to the immense unhappiness or even death of your computer.  This is where the screwdriver with the magnetic tip comes in handy -- the bolt will stick to the tip of it instead of falling into the computer.  If you drop a bolt inside anyhow, you can easily fish it out by letting magnetic force stick it to the screwdriver tip.

Now, with your NIC firmly bolted in place and no loose bolts -- reboot.  If you are fortunate, Win95/98 will automatically find and set up drivers for your new hardware.  It will almost certainly ask you where it can find drivers.  Tell your computer to look on both the Win 98/95 installation CD-ROM, and any installation disk that came with your NIC, and to make an Internet connection to automatically search the Microsoft driver database. 

Nine times out of ten this works. The next page shows how to tell if you were successful.  

How do you know that your NIC is successfully installed?  Reboot your computer, then click on Control Panel, then the System icon.  This brings up the three tab “System Properties” box.  Click on “Network Adapters” to see if it recognizes the NIC(s) you installed.  Figure 1 shows what a successful NIC installation looks like. 

Figure 1: A successful installation of two NICs: a 3COM Etherlink II and an NE2000 Compatible. 

Wizard tip:  Install two or three NICs each on one or more of your computers.  On a two NIC computer, you can build a firewall.  With three NICs you can build network topologies that will drive your friends nuts when you give them access to your LAN and invite them to play.

If you don’t see your NIC there, or if you see it with a yellow question mark in front of it as in Figure 2 below, you have a problem. In this case, I have just clicked on “Remove” and am going to try to reinstall the NIC.   In that case, click on this link to troubleshooting.
 

Figure 2: A NIC that failed to install properly.  Oh, oh, now you see that I keep weird hours...