I'll try to clarify, without using all the technical terms which can confuse people, especially me!
Normally the hard drive connects to the motherboard with the same cable as to the CD ROM. However, my mobo has two connectors, one for ATA100, one for ATA66 (these are for different data transfer rates of the hard disk). Both these connectors have master and slave sockets. I do not use the slave sockets, which I presume are for setting up a second, slave hard drive. My udma100 hard disk connects to the udma100 master on the hard drive, and using another old cable I have connected my CD drive to the master udma66. I'm thinkind data transfer rates will be better, as each device has its own cable, going into separate inputs on the motherboard. But I'm not sure. The system works perfectly, only startup is a little slow...possibly nothing to do with this. Hope this helps everyone to understand. A further point is, I believe, that you should not connect the CD ROM to the slave connector, if you have only one pair of master/slave inputs. I think then the motherboard will not be able to process information from both sources at the same time.
Sooo...anyone know how this stuff works for sure?
SEASONS GREATINGS!
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