Secondary IDE controller dead?

[thefriar]

Hey all,

I was inside my PC getting rid of dust with some dust remover spray, and when I put everything back together, nothing on my secondary IDE cable is recognized. I tried switching cables with the primary and switching power connections, and nothing makes a difference.

I'm just wondering if there's anything else I need to check before I conclude that my secondary controller is dead & I need a new mainboard.

This is an older system - PII 350MHz, running Win98.

Thanks for any help you can give,

Mike

 

[mainegeek]

Check the pin #1 orientation with the cable vs. controller
and any drives attached. Make sure the drives have power plugged in and all cable connections are tight.

 

[gargouille]

If you haven't:

Boot into Windows and check Device Manager to see if there are problems with the controller. Drivers sometimes will say they can see the controller isn't working (altho it happened to me on XP...not positive this happens in 98)
If there are no problems there...

Shut down and put your hard drive on the suspected bad one and try to boot. You may have to remove some things from the chain to isolate the problem. Go into the BIOS at post, set the BIOS to boot from IDE1 and see if it'll auto detect.

If no auto-detect...suspect the controller

 

[thefriar]

Thanks for the helpful replies. The problem is definitely not the secondary controller. I've booted with my hard drive on it. I'm thinking now I may just have some configuration problems with my CD-RW, as I haven't been able to get the PC to access it (although it made the baby step of seeing it as a CD-ROM). I'll have to play with it some more tonight.

Mike