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

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

Jim,

It sounds like you have diagnosed the problem.  They do make longer IDE 
cables.  But your terminology is slightly in error.  The system board, like 
most made over the past 20 or so years, has two IDE channels, usually called 
Primary and Secondary.  Each channel supports two drives, called Master and 
Slave.  You can operate up to four of any combination of IDE devices, whether 
hard drive, CD Drive, DVD drive, tape drive, etc.  General practice is that 
the boot hard drive is the Primary Master, but it doesn't actually have to 
be.  One connector is not for hard drives and the other for CD drives.

In any case, unless something is incorrectly set that you haven't noticed 
and told us about, it would appear that your Secondary IDE channel has quit 
working.  I would try to confirm that, and if true, I would not continue to 
use the system board any longer than it took to find a replacement.  Since 
the reason for the failure of the Secondary IDE channel is not known, it would 
be safest to assume that it could eventually cause further problems or 
failures.  And if it does, it will of course be at, to paraphrase Poroit, the 
time most inconvenient.

In a message dated 6/1/2011 1:38:30 AM Central Daylight Time, 
JJan-3 at cox.net writes: 
> 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
> 

Robert & Susan Downs - Houston
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