Cd drives and IDE channels....

[Scotsdude]

Hi,

at the moment, I've got a 10Gb HDD with a CD drive running as slave on my first channel, and a TEAC 4x4x32 CDRW as master on the second channel. I want to put both CD drives on the second channel, as I have another HDD that i want to slave to the first one.

I've tried every possible setting to get the two to work, but no joy.

Neither will it work with another cd drive, which i borrowed from a friend. drive every possible combination, no joy.

strangely enough, i can slave a hdd to the CDRW and it works fine......

any ideas?

Scotsdude

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Erm you don't mention whether you've changed the jumpers on the CD drives or not...

Should work if one is jumpered as Master and the other as Slave (Cable Select is somewhat flaky).

Also, you could try the method I've stuck to since the old days; Master on the end of the cable, Slave on the middle connector.

Have you tried autodetecting the drives in the BIOS after attaching them to the cable? I know it shows up as None, but I've often found that this will detect a malignant CD drive.

Hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[Scotsdude]

Citrix,

sorry, I should've said!! tried changing the jumpers to all possible permutations (big word - yay me!!! ) to absolutely no avail. every time i've done this, i've tried autodetecting in the BIOS.

now that I think about it, it quite often didn't let me boot. the motherboard would start, then just sit there and do zip until i changed things again.

possibly something to do with the power....?

help me, for i am confuzzled!!

Scotsdude

 

[crisc]

No, I don't think your mobo is "not starting", it's consistant with the problem you are having. If BIOS isn't finding your HD (with your OS) then it's just going to sit there.
You said: "strangely enough, i can slave a hdd to the CDRW and it works fine......" Have you tried switching the jumpers around and making the HD master and CDRW slave ON THAT SAME CHANNEL? I know how you said you wanted both HDs on one channel, but I ran into a problem with my mobo and it took me a long time to discover I had a bad IDE channel. If you can hook it up this way, then try removing the CDRW and adding the 2nd HD. If it doesn't work try removing the CDRW completely and having the HD on that channel by itself.

 

[Scotsdude]

crisc,

the problem i stated occurs when I've got my original HDD already own as master on the 1st channel. its my 2nd HDD that i managed to get on as a slave on the 2nd channel.

even if i didn't have a hard drive connected, the machine will still start up and at least try to run thru the POST sequence. in this case, i meant that it wasn't. there was no POST, and no signal to the monitor either.

Scotsdude

 

[crisc]

Ah, the key term missing was POST. Yes, even without a HD attached the PC should POST and count RAM. If your not getting that, then that's another problem. Any diagnosis of your HD/controller problems should wait until you are getting consistant bootup performance, IMO...

 

[jaeddy]

Not to be obvious here, but have you tried replacing cables? some of the oddest crap I've ever run in to was due to a flaky IDE cable.