Installation

Unlike the earlier version of this product, the current RD2 Pro comes pre-assembled. The front panel now comes attached to the PCB. So, all you need to do is insert the PCI card into an empty slot, place the display module into an empty 5 1/4" bay, connect both devices using the supplied ribbon cables and you are done!

Of course, that's only for the PCI bus monitoring functions! :) If you want to use the USB and Firewire ports, the installation process becomes a lot more tedious. This is where you absolutely need to refer to the manual. By default, the two USB ports use 11 pins but the arrangement of those pins differs from manufacturer to manufacturer. That's the 'nightmare' part of the installation. You must check your motherboard manual to determine the proper arrangement of the USB pins. Using the wrong arrangement can 'fry' your USB device when you connect it to the USB port.

This is not IOSS' fault because there's no standard connector as far as USB headers on motherboards are concerned. To provide maximum compatibility, they had to use loose connectors. As such, I didn't bother to install the additional USB ports.

The RD2 Pro occupies a full 5 1/4" slot, but fortunately there's still room behind RD2 Pro for a 3 1/2" hard disk! As mentioned earlier, installation was very simple if you just want to make use of its PCI analyzing functions. But it's a totally different story when it comes to actually getting it to work! Believe it or not, it took me a few hours to get it running properly! I had to consult the troubleshooting section in the manual and try out the entire list of solutions before I hit on one that worked!

Here is the problem. After installing the RD2 Pro, I turned it on. Initially, I thought it was working. The display blinked into life for 2 seconds. But after that, it stop displaying any information!

According to the manual, there are three solutions to the problem. First, I tried using different PCI slots on my MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard, which comes with 5 PCI slots. Two of the PCI slots were already occupied by a SoundBlaster Live! sound card and a DLink network card, which leaves me with just three slots to play with. I tried all three empty PCI slots and the RD2 Pro still wouldn't work!

So I proceeded to the next solution - changing a BIOS option called 'Auto Detect DIMM/PCI Clk' (Ed. : You can read more about this BIOS option in the BIOS Optimization Guide.). Unfortunately, my KT3 does not come with that option. I have only one last solution left.

According to the manual, I need to download an Award utility called modbin.exe, which allows me to enable my motherboard BIOS' hidden options. My KT3 Ultra uses AMI BIOS so I had to find a similar utility file for AMI BIOS. I headed to http://www.ioss.com.tw/ and in their FAQ page, I found a question that was extremely similar to my problem but involving a MSI K7T266 PRO2 motherboard instead.

Following instructions there, I downloaded the AMI version of the utility but I could not find the option. According to the FAQ, it appears that I would need need to ask MSI for registered information in order to edit the BIOS. It would probably take me several more days so I skipped it!

In the end, I went back to the first solution - changing PCI slots. This time though, I took out both SoundBlaster Live! and network card. I slipped the RD2 Pro card into the PCI5 slot and it worked! At last! Without hesitation, I installed the other PCI cards into the remaining slots without causing any problems.