shaun

Specs:
mobo: Abit BE6 II (v1.2)
BIOS: HP370 (award updated to version 71)
cd drives:
Primary - Creative Labs CD5233E
Secondary - LG CED-81???

hard drives:
Primary - Seagate U10 model: ST310212A
Secondary - Maxtor 91303D

Problem:

My BIOS currently does not recognize any HD or CD DRIVES yet it boots up off my Primary HD which is running win 98. In a thread I've started at another place <a href="http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/162819.html">(here)</a>
I found out that I have HPT370, which seems to be a RAID controller.
At one time the CD DRIVES did worked and functioned properly.

I've tried a bunch of things: booted from a bootdisk w/ CD Support, installed a generic dos cd rom driver, and re-connected the IDE's in a bunch of ways. Nothing has seemed to help.

All i'm looking to do is to get the CD DRIVES working so I make this a linux box. If anyone could help I would appreciate it.

Thanks, Shaun

mark3567

Hi Shaun,

I know from what you said that some changes have been made to your system as you have "tried" different things. Let me ask you to get back to basics and run a check of both jumpers and cable settings. Here is a chart you can use to double check.

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.

shaun

In order to make things simpler I changed my setup to:

Primary Master: Seagate U10 model: ST310212A
Primary Slave : LG CED-81???


I noticed that i did not have the ide cables setup the way you suggested so I rearranged them... setting jumpers and SL and MA and also Cable Select and still the bios does not recognize the HD or CD drive and Win98 and dos do not recognize the CD drive.

mark3567

Hi,

Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing, I would suggest the following:

IDE #1
Motherboard ...... Seagate(set as Master).....Maxtor (set as slave)
Blue connector....gray connector...............black connector(end of cable)

IDE #2
Motherboard........... CD (set as master)................CD (set as slave)

Remember, use an 80 pin cable for the hard drives

shaun

yes that is correct.