Home > Video Exchange - ISA to PCI
Video Exchange - ISA to PCI
1328 Azalea Garden Rd.
Norfolk VA. 23502
757-855-6006
Fax: 757-855-3761
Date: October 15, 2001
Contact: Customer Service ( )
This information bulletin affects - Nitrogen Control Units NCU1/ NCU2/ NCU4
When retrofitting a new style PCI type touch screen to an NCU that contained an ISA screen as original equipment the hardware swap is easily performed (the new video card is placed in PCI slot instead of an ISA slot) however the communications port (com port) that the touch screen uses to talk to the motherboard must be reconfigured. This is due to the absense of a com port on the new card.
The origial ISA card contained a com port that was configured by way of a set of jumper pins found just above the card to motherboard connector. Upon removal of the old card, one should note that the pins are normally set to COM 1 and IRQ 4 on the standard NCU system.
In order to prevent a system conflict with the motherboards own COM 1 port, the motherboards COM 1 port was disabled when this card was first installed.
When installing the PCI version, one must perform the following steps:
1) Remove the old touch screen, interface cable and video card from the system.
2) Mount the new screen in the NCU and insert the PCI card into an unobstructed PCI slot on the motherboard.
3) Connect the new interface cable between the touch screen and the video card.
4) Connect a 9 pin to motherboard interface ribbon cable from the bottom 9 pin connector on the video card to the COM 1 plug on the motherboard (note, this is normaly found next to the COM 2 port that connects the motherboard to the lower PLC).
5) Boot the system an press DEL when prompted (after the memory check) to enter the CMOS setup.
6) Go to the "integrated periphrials" section of the CMOS setup and change the COM 1 settings (sometimes referred to as UART 1) from "Disabled" to "3F8/IRQ4".
7) Save and exit the CMOS.
After restarting the controller, you may need to recalibrate the screen