[Ham-Computers] Can I Connect an IDE Drive and CD Drive to the Same Cable?

[Jim Hill]

Thanks for the help.  Guess I wasn't clear about my problem.  The 
motherboard has two connectors, one for IDE hard drives and the other 
for CD drives.  The CD drive part stopped working recently.  I need 
to use the CD drive occasionally, both to boot from a CD and to read 
a CD once the computer has started, and asked for any suggestions

I connected the CD drive to the center connector of the data cable 
used for hard drives, and went to setup.  The Primary Slave Drive was 
set to off, and I changed it to auto.  I saved the change and 
restarted the computer.  In setup, the Primary Slave drive now says 
CD-ROM device, and the boot sequence has CD-ROM device as the first 
choice.  I can boot to the CD device, and use it normally after the 
computer has started.  Both drives are set to Cable Select.

It's a temporary fix, as the data cables are too short to install the 
drives normally,  The hard drive cable is much too short, but the CD 
cable was long enough for the drives to be connected with the drives 
positioned near the motherboard connector.

Jim


At 09:43 AM 5/31/2011, you wrote:
>Hi:
>I have an old Dell 4600 running Win XP.  It runs ok except the CD
>drive doesn't work...... snip
>
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