Adding an AGP Slot

[Papahyooie]

The title probably has you shaking your head already, but I just thought I'd ask this and see if anyone knows if its possible. And before everyone says "buy a new motherboard," I already have plenty, and this a "for the pure hell of it" project, if its even possible. So here we go:

I have a HP computer that has abnormally crappy onboard video and no video port. It just sits in my closet because its pretty useless. It has a decent P4 processor and DDR ram, but absolutely terrible onboard graphics. Heres the odd part though. It has places on the motherboard for an AGP slot to be soldered on. I'm guessing this is because they had a more expensive model that had AGP graphics and used the same board for lower costs just like everyone else uses crippled stuff for cheaper stuff, blah blah that kind of thing. I can see the pin holes, and its even labeled AGP, but theres no slot there. So... if one had the bawls and the desire to try desoldering a slot off of an old broken mobo and soldering it onto this motherboard, could the bios be modified to include an AGP option? Im assuming since there is a pin header (or rather holes for one) then there is support for it somewhere on the board. Maybe if someone knows about this kind of thing or if anyone shows any interest i'll post pics of the board and list all the hardware on it (because i have no idea what kind of chip on the board would decide whether it supported AGP, but like i said I assume there is one somewhere.)

Anyways so there you have it. Whatcha think?

 

[KainXS]

for starter use a utility and check if the board detects that it has agp, weather the slot is there or not it should still detect agp support, this has been done a few times, like how when their 2 channel ide support but only 1 header is there, you can solder that header or how pcie is there but no slot

 

[Papahyooie]

im guessing gpu-z can detect if it supports it? Or is there a different utility?

 

[inf3rno]

I think after soldering you have to flash mother board BIOS.

 

[Papahyooie]

yea thats what I would think, but have no idea how to edit a bios or how i should go about that.

 

[inf3rno]

Editing or flashing a BIOS of mobo, I suppose is not as easy as for a gfx card. Some professional should guide you for this.

 

[Papahyooie]

Which is why im asking for one

 

[EiSFX]

finding the Bios maybe easy i think anyways you just need to find another HP model that was built around the same time as the one you have now and looks the same and may even have the same pecs just it includes the AGP port and i think once you find that model of HP you should be able to download the BIOS right from HP but if it will actully work i have no idea


you woulden't happen to have the model of this HP comp would you maybe i can help you find the AGP version of that same Board

 

[hat]

good luck actually soldering the port on unless you have the million-dollar equipment needed to do so

 

[inf3rno]

good luck actually soldering the port on unless you have the million-dollar equipment needed to do so

Yeah for just clean soldering you have to invest a hell of money.

 

[Papahyooie]

Thats very true EiSFX, i could just find the bios from the model that has AGP on it. I will look into that. I dont have the model number on me tonight but when i get home i'll look into it. I'd just like to see if anyone knows about bioses if theres some sort of checksum that is done or whatnot to see if its the correct one for the board, because that would have to edited I assume. As for million-dollar equipment needed to solder it, not even close. This is easy bacon. The pins are about the size of IDE headers, a bit smaller. Ive soldered RAM chips onto a linux xbox to give it 128mbs of ram. So imagine youre soldering on ram chips with a 20$ radio shack POS, then compare that to soldering wire-sized pins, sounds like a breeze to me. With a bit of flux and de-soldering braid and some know-how you can solder just about anything. Theres a tutorial on a site called xbox-scene called "become a fearless soldering god" where he tells you how to solder tiny little connections by blobbing on solder and then using the flux and de-soldering braid to suck off the exess. I imagine i can handle this just fine.

 

[inf3rno]

Pretty confident hmmmm! That is good and good luck to your soldering adventure.

Bye the way someone delete my duplicate post due to internet lagging.

 

[Deleted member 3]

good luck actually soldering the port on unless you have the million-dollar equipment needed to do so

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=192842

 

[Papahyooie]

aw... after all that reading and he failed lol.

 

[eidairaman1]

Pretty confident hmmmm! That is good and good luck to your soldering adventure.

Bye the way someone delete my duplicate post due to internet lagging.

you can delete it yourself via the Edit Post Function

 

[inf3rno]

Thanks bro.

 

[KH0UJ]

ived done this before, it worked fine and well, just add an AGP slot, installed a geforce 2 and update the BIOS using the onboard videocard while flashing, but if you wanna do it in a simpler way, just add a PCI video card with a higher specs.

 

[lemonadesoda]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=192842

This gentleman needs reporting for timewasting! I just spent a long time reading a thread of nearly 200 posts expecting to find something useful/interesting.

 

[suraswami]

why not just use a pci video card? I know its fun but chances of killing it is more than just putting in pci card and be done with it.

 

[Papahyooie]

Well, I would just put in a PCI video card the 8500 looks pretty good, and I actually got really good results with a 6200 back in the day in my Dell, but the point is, this comp is just sitting in a closet. Really, I already have my gaming rig (which is about to get sold for a laptop) so its not like i'm trying to really upgrade anything. The reason for doing this is simply because its there, I noticed it, and I wondered if I could. Im not really trying to build a serious rig out of it. I happen to have some good AGP cards sitting around that would spank a pci card, and this thing has crappy video, and an AGP slot that isnt a slot. Pure and simple, like i said in the first post, this is for the pure hell of it.