IDE Catch-22

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lukas
  • Start date Start date
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Lukas

I just got finished building my first PC (I use Macs mostly). It
powers up and it goes to DOS and does it's thing but there's a
problem. It doesn't seem to recognize my CD-ROM drive. It tells me to
insert a boot-disk into the CD-ROM, but it won't recognize it in the
first place. ALSO, it won't recognize my HD either. However, here's
the tricky part: I have the HD hooked up the Master end of the IDE
cable (the black part) and the CD-ROM to the middle (gray) one. When
both are plugged in, neither works. When the CD-ROM is unplugged, the
HD is recognized. It's almost like the CD-ROM is breaking the chain in
the middle or something; I don't know, really. So, what is the
problem? Jumper settings? BIOS? Anything come to mind?

Sorry for the rather lengthy explanation, but if you need more info,
just ask :)

Thanks!
 
jumpers maybe set wrong....and if you have 1 Hard drive and 1 cdrom may i suggest putting them on separate IDE ports primary /
secondary
 
JAD said:
jumpers maybe set wrong....and if you have 1 Hard drive and 1 cdrom may i
Click to expand...
suggest putting them on separate IDE ports primary /
secondary
Click to expand...

Improper jumper settings was my first guess as well.

What tipped me off was that when one device was connected by itself (i.e.
your HDD) it worked correctly, but the second device caused neither to be
recognized. This usually happens when you have two "masters" on the same
cable.

If two IDE devices (i.e. a HDD and a CD-ROM) share the same cable one must
be jumpered for "master" and the other for "slave". The jumpers can be found
on the back, near the IDE plug. The CD-ROM will likely be well marked as to
which jumper setting yields which state near the jumper itself. (MA =
Master, SL = Slave, CS = Cable Select ... don't bother with CS, it's
basically useless ...) The HDD on the other hand may have to have more than
one jumper in place, in most cases these jumper settings can be found on the
label on the top side of the drive ... but beware, the illustrations can be
confusing.

It is also worthy to note that when you have two devices connected as such
that they should be connected to the Primary IDE port (usually blue) and the
HDD should be the "master" and the CD-ROM "slave".

I also agree with the previous poster that, if one HDD and one CD-ROM are
all of the IDE devices in your system, it would offer the best performance
to jumper them both as masters and connect them to separate IDE ports. (one
to the blue, and one to the black)


By the way ... when it asks for a boot disk it is not asking for a CD, but
for a floppy. You can, however, boot from a bootable CD (i.e. any Microsoft
OS CD) once you make the configuration changes suggested above ... however
it might also require the setting of the BIOS to check for a bootable CD
(though most BIOS' are set this way by default)

Best of luck, and if you have any more questions please feel free to ask!


Drumguy
 
On the back of your HD and/or CD-ROM there's a jumper. The jumper can be
set to MA (master), SL (slave) or CS (cable select).

If you are using two devices on one cable one MUST be slave and the
other MUST be master. You can jumper one as SL (slave) and the other as
MA (master). Or you could jumper both to CS (cable select), in which
case their position on the ribbon cable will determine which is master
and which is slave.

Note that your boot HD MUST be master. Meaning that, if you put the
CD-ROM on the same cable it MUST be slave. You could also put the CD-ROM
on a second IDE cable and jumper it to master (recommended, but not
necessary).
 
Hi Lukas,

I read all the responses to your question and although everyone had some
good comments, I'll try to explain it all a little better in my opinion.

I agree with one post regarding putting each drive on a ide channel
seperately as a master if you are only using one drive of each kind. To do
that you must configure the hard drive as a master with a jumper, but it
must be set as a master with no slave present or as the only drive in the
system. If you set it as a master, it will be looking for a slave if it is
not configured as the only drive with no slave present on the cable. So
basically it can be set 2 ways (master with slave present or as master with
no slave). The instructions that came with the hard drive should explain
that if you are still confused. Most Western Digital hard drives are a
master with no slave present if you simply remove the jumper altogether.
Other manufacturers have their own ways of doing things so YMMV.

To use them both on one controller channel, you would jumper the hard drive
as a master (with slave present) and the optical device (cd-rom) as a slave.

When you configure the optical device as a master with the jumper set at
master, it doesn't matter if a slave is around or not like the hard drives
require, if you use it on a seperate ide channel.

The way CS works is that both drives would be jumpered as CS and the master
would be connected to the far end of the cable. The slave would then be
connected to the "center" connector. To use CS you MUST use a 80 wire ide
cable.

Hope that helps explain it a bit better for you.

Regards, Bob "hopelessly insane machine warrior" Troll
 
I just got finished building my first PC (I use Macs mostly). It
powers up and it goes to DOS and does it's thing but there's a
problem. It doesn't seem to recognize my CD-ROM drive. It tells me to
insert a boot-disk into the CD-ROM, but it won't recognize it in the
first place. ALSO, it won't recognize my HD either. However, here's
the tricky part: I have the HD hooked up the Master end of the IDE
cable (the black part) and the CD-ROM to the middle (gray) one. When
both are plugged in, neither works. When the CD-ROM is unplugged, the
HD is recognized. It's almost like the CD-ROM is breaking the chain in
the middle or something; I don't know, really. So, what is the
problem? Jumper settings? BIOS? Anything come to mind?

Sorry for the rather lengthy explanation, but if you need more info,
just ask :)

Thanks!
Click to expand...

You've got plenty of good advice already. I do hope your newsserver is
getting them. Still I'd like to comment.

You may safely ignore all good advice about putting HD and CDROM on
separate channels. That's not a big deal. And in fact when you're
eventually installing a CDRW or DVD, that's not how you want things.
Then you would mostly want the CDROM and HD together on one channel.
And the CDRW on the other. So do whatever is convenient.

Once you've got HD jumpered correctly to 'master' and CDROM to
'slave*, (if it's on the same cable as the HD) your bios should see
and recognize the drives.

Now check two things. Your CDROM should be first in your BIOS
bootsequence. And the bios bootvirus protection should be disabled.
(enable this again, once you've got your OS installed).

If you've got WindowsXP it's just downhill from there. If you use
another OS you need to first partition your HD with a FDISK utility.
Use Linus FDISK for Linux and MS FDISK (Win98 and later) for MS OS.

Just boot on your install CD. Good Luck.


ancra
 
Ancra said:
You may safely ignore all good advice about putting HD and
CDROM on separate channels. That's not a big deal. And
in fact when you're eventually installing a CDRW or DVD,
that's not how you want things. Then you would mostly
want the CDROM and HD together on one channel.
And the CDRW on the other...
Click to expand...


Why is it preferable to put an optical drive and the HD on
the same channel, and the other optical drive on the other
channel? Are you concerned about writes to one OD
delaying reads from the other OD when ripping? If that's
the concern, I would think that the ATA channels and
(device caches) are too fast to let channel contention slow
down data transfers between ATAPI devices.


*TimDaniels*
 
Why is it preferable to put an optical drive and the HD on
the same channel, and the other optical drive on the other
channel? Are you concerned about writes to one OD
delaying reads from the other OD when ripping? If that's
the concern, I would think that the ATA channels and
(device caches) are too fast to let channel contention slow
down data transfers between ATAPI devices.


*TimDaniels*
Click to expand...

When two devices of differing speeds are on the same IDE port they
will defer to the slowest data transfer speed but only if both
devices are accessed at the same time.Just having two devices on the
same IDE port will not slow either down :)
Example:1
"On-the-fly" CD disk to CD disk burning will take over twice as long
as it can if both CD devices are on the same IDE port.
The user has to decide the best configuration for,"Their" usage.
Example:2
If the user does a lot of large file manipulation between hard drives
then the hard drives should be on separate IDE ports.

Ideally if the user is doing a lot of large data manipulation they
should have all devices on separate IDE ports so no,"Wait States" are
incurred and the all data busses can be read and written to at the
same time.
HTH :)



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On 25 Sep 2003 22:49:44 -0700, In this world we created
I just got finished building my first PC (I use Macs mostly). It
powers up and it goes to DOS and does it's thing but there's a
problem. It doesn't seem to recognize my CD-ROM drive. It tells me to
insert a boot-disk into the CD-ROM, but it won't recognize it in the
first place. ALSO, it won't recognize my HD either. However, here's
the tricky part: I have the HD hooked up the Master end of the IDE
cable (the black part) and the CD-ROM to the middle (gray) one. When
both are plugged in, neither works. When the CD-ROM is unplugged, the
HD is recognized. It's almost like the CD-ROM is breaking the chain in
the middle or something; I don't know, really. So, what is the
problem? Jumper settings? BIOS? Anything come to mind?

Sorry for the rather lengthy explanation, but if you need more info,
just ask :)

Thanks!
Click to expand...

http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/hard.html
HTH :)



--
Free Windows/PC help,
It's a G not a J in jmx to reply :)
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
Free songs download,
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/17/sheppard.html
 
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