Installing CD Writer

[PortVale]

I have installed a Plextor Plexwriter 16/10/40A on a machine running Win2K. The PC already has a standard CD -ROM drive which I connected as a slave to the HDD and the writer as master on the secondary IDE channel. The original HDD ribbon cable connections are specifically labeled system, slave and master, something I hadn't seen before. I couldn't use this cable as the distance between the slave and master connections are too short so I used a generic ribbon cable. Everything booted up fine, but I have lost the DMA capability of the HDD, it will only run in PIO mode, which is very slow. I have disconnected the CD-ROM and now have the HDD a master on IDE 1 and the CD writer as master on IDE 2. I would still like to use the standard CD ROM drive. IS the generic cable at fault or would I have not been able to get HDD DMA on any cable?
I have also posted this under the CD/DVD forum.

 

[jclw]

What kind of drive controller / motherboard?

It sounds like that one cable might be an ATA66 cable and the other an ATA33 cable. Does one have more (but smaller) wires?

Try:
Primary Master: HDD (with good cable)
Primary Slave: None
Secondary Master: CD-RW (with generic cable)
Secondary Slave: CD-ROM (with generic cable)

Double check you Master/Slave jumpers.

- JW

 

[doczenith1]

I seem to remember reading that if you have two devices connected to the same ide controller they both run at the slower interface speed. I could be wrong though.

As far as hooking both cd drives to the same controller...it generally not recommended. The reason is that the controller can only "speak" to one device at a time, so when copying cd's the controller can't simultaneously read from the cdrom and write to the cd burner. If your system and cdrom are fast enough this might now be a problem for you though. I suspect that being able to enable dma in windows for both cd devices might be a factor also. How old is your cdrom? Does is support udma33 mode? Are you using a 80 wire cable for the hdd/cdrom on primary controller connection? If not, try it. Make sure the master device is connected to the end connector of the cable. Hope this helps.

 

[PortVale]

The mobo is an MS-6322 with only two ide controllers.
I suspect that the original cable is ATA66, as it looks like your description. I will leave the setup as is for now, i.e no CD-ROM as the writer images quite quckly.
Thanks for the reply.

 

[VooDooDaddy]

doczenith1 is right. When you have 2 ide devices on the same controller it does default to the slower transfer mode of the 2. Why don't you try connecting your plextor to the same ata66 cable the hard disk is on. I checked plextor's web site, the burner xfers in DMA mode 2, better than pio... If your hdd xfers faster than DMA mode 2, you might want to forget about the cd-rom drive and just install the hdd on the primary and the burner on the secondary.

Also, the ide cable has the lables on it because that is the recomended way to connect all of your devices to all ide cables, it will work if you don't, but its so easy to do it anyways...

"I drank what?" -Socrates

 

[Guest]

Your ms 6322 has ata-100 bus and ata-66 on the 2nd port.. switching cables is what cause the problem of pIO on your harddrive... Do like the others have said here. Use the ata-100 cable for the hard drive, and use the other drives are master and slave configuration on the 2nd ide port.

 

[kal326]

Are the cables the same, both 80 pin cables? If the one that was on the hard drive was an 80 pin and the generic a 40 pin the the drive would default to Ultra/33, but shouldnt go to PIO mode. The hard drive might be set to cable select and the cd rom to a master or slave. That might mess with it, but thats a far fetched idea. I would just try the hard drive with the generic cable and see what happens. If its still only going as PIO mode, try the original cable and see if it works in DMA mode after that. If so then something is messed up with the generic cable. Its all about troubleshooting...........

A mime is a great thing to waste! :lol: