Admiral-Awesome

I have a Dell 2400
the cd-rw drive that came with it stopped working, and i got a new Lite-On Cd-Rw drive. the new cd drive only worked if the old one was hooked up as well. i never understood this. anyway, it was never a problem until i tried to setup my computer today with just the lite-on. my computer didnt recognize the cd-rw as being there at all...then i hooked up the old cd-rw with the new one as it was before, and it still doesnt recognize it...i dont know what to do...

mark3567

Hi Admiral,

Let us try to get back to basics. Many drives that are shipped from the factory (like your Lite-on) do not have the same jumper setting as your other drive on the same cable. Let's try to use this chart to check and make sure you have everything set up correctly with the jumpers and ribbon cables:

The master and slave jumpers must be set up correctly on your drives as displayed on the top of each drive.

DO NOT mix master and slave with CS (cable select) on the same ribbon cable. If one is Master the other MUST be slave. If one is Cable Select the other one on the same ribbon cable must be Cable Select. (Please note that the majority of hard drives are factory default as Cable Select)

Make sure the drive is placed correctly on the ribbon cable as shown below:

M
O
T
H ==Ribbon Cable=== Slave ===Master (end of cable)
E
R ..................................„» OR „º
B
O == Ribbon Cable==Cable Select==Cable Select (end of cable)
A ..............................( as Slave)……. ( as Master)
R
D


Ribbon Cables and colors of 80 pin cables look and are to be used like this:

Motherboard============Slave==============Master
…….....….Blue…………...........……..Gray….............…………………Black
.
Make sure a master is always present, because you can not run a slave without a master.

Cables must be the 80 conductor cables for hard drives and never any more than 18” long.

If you try cable select and that does not work, give the master/slave setting a try. Conversly, if the master/slave setting does not work, give the cable select setting a try.

A friend recently told me that with Western Digital if it is the only drive on the cable, the jumper will need to be removed ( try removing the jumper and connect the drive by itself on the IDE channel ) I don’t use Western Digital drives, so I can’t verify this, but might be worth a try

Please note that the floppy cable red mark is put on opposite as the regular hard drivers for about 95% of the floppy drivers. Otherwise, the red mark faces away from you as you work in the case or you could say it faces the power source for the drive. (only a few are different)

Please let us know if you have other questions or need more assistance.

Admiral-Awesome

i set both jumpers to cs, didnt work.
i set jumper to top cd-drive to master
then set bottom jumper to slave. still didnt work.
my computer just refuses to recognize them as even being plugged in
the ribbon is fit just fine into every port...i dont know what else to think.

mark3567

Hi,

Sorry I cound not get back but something came up to prevent me from being here for a while. Anyway, clarify for me a little bit. Tell me exactly how many drives of what kind (brand name and type) you have and what is to be hooked up to IDE #1 and what is to be hooked up to IDE #2. That should help to sort out the problem.

johnwill

You might take a look at this article, the same problem happens with 2K and XP. Q3320553 - Missing CD Drives Win-XP

Admiral-Awesome

I have a Dell Dimension 2400
2.2ghz celeron
384mb pc2100ram
a 40gb hard drive

the original cd-rw drive was a Samsung CD-RW Model SW-248
i have a pretty decent knowledge of computers, but taking them apart is only a mediocre skill of mine.
the new cd-rw is a Lite On model LTR-52246S
anyway, back to my mediocre knowledge of putting together and taking apart computers.

the samsung has inscribed on the top:

DIGITAL AUDIO CSM 39-IDE INTERFACE-1 POWER
DO G R G G L SLA 40- - - - - - - - - -2 +5 G G +12

The Lite-On has:

DIGITAL ANALOG
AUDIO AUDIO CSM
D G R G G L SLA.....Eh, im just realizing this doesnt have much significance, and its all the same.... anyway

Im hooking up the Samsung on the top (which is where it came from originally)

and the Lite-On is going below it.
the ribbon only has 2 connectors

M
O
T
H
E---liteon----samsung ;)
R
B
O
A
R
D

if this doesnt answer your question, let me know what IDE means and ill let you know.

thank you guys so much for your help, this is saving me alot of grief if it gets fixed.

mark3567

Hi,

Taking your info, you should be set as this:



M
O
T
H
E
R------------CDRW (set as slave)----------Hard Drive(set as master)
B
O.................With an 80 pin cable and not a 40 pin cable
A..........................Have you tried a brand new cable???
R
D

Have you gone to the website of each item on your cable and double checked their setting for master and slave???? It still sounds like the jumpers are not set correctly or the cable is not an 80 pin cable. These drives should co-exist on one cable with no problem.

Now, if you look at your board, you will find also (well, 99 percent of them anyway) another place to connect a ribbon cable. it should be right beside the one you are connecting to and would be IDE #2. If you find that, then take both drives, set them as master, put them on a separate cable and on the END of the cable and hook your hard drive to IDE #1, and your CDrom to IDE #2..

Let me know what you do and if it sees them when you do that. That setup will look like this:

M
O
T
H
E
R-----IDE #1-------Hard Drive(set as master end of cable)
B
O.......IDE #2------CDRW (set as master end of cable)
A
R
D

Admiral-Awesome

okay...i fixed the problem...i dont know why this fixed it, but it did...heres how it went, in case anyone has a similar problem.

i started off by disconnecting the ribbons from everything except the floppy drive.

i removed the ribbons going to the hard drive, and the cd drives. (took them completely off of the motherboard.

the IDE arrangement looked like this

CD DRIVES
HARD DRIVE

i just switched the ide ribbons to



HARD DRIVE
CD DRIVES

i made sure the cd-drive jumper was set to master, and the hard drive as well.

once i switched the ribbons...everything was recognized.

hope this helps someone.
since then ive added a 160gb hard drive on the ribbon with the cd-rw, and i kept my 40gb attached to the single ended ribbon now in IDE 1.

and i do want to thank mark for all your help, i appreciate the comprehensive posts.

mark3567

Hi,

So glad to hear of your success and happy to have been part of getting it going. Now, what I want you to do is stay around the forum and if you see someone that has the same problem that you had, give them a hand. That way, you learn by helping and the person you helped learns also. If you even read some of the threads from time to time, you learn a lot about what you can and can not do with a computer and are able to help others.

Have a nice evening and look forward to seeing you around the forum.