[TriLUG] hardware question - IDE problem

Jeremy Portzer jeremyp at pobox.com
Wed Oct 30 10:04:38 EST 2002


Greg,

Are you familiar with the concept of "master" and "slave" devices on the
IDE bus?  You must make sure that when you have two devices, one is
master and the other is slave.  When you have one device, it should be
configured as standalone (master without slave).  The various jumper
settings are usually clearly marked on the devices.  I'm sure there are
numerous HOWTOs on the web, too -- let me know if you want a pointer and
I'll look for one.

--Jeremy


On Wed, 2002-10-30 at 09:54, Greg Brown wrote:
> I've been fighting with my new-to-me Dell Optiplex PII for a day now.  The
> problem is that my BIOS does not see the the CDROM if, and only if, the hard
> drive is installed.
> 
> I have two IDE busses on this machine (which I believe are named IDE0 and
> IDE1).  If I put the disk on IDE0 without the CDROM present the machine
> attempts to boot off the disk.  If I put the CDROM on the end or the middle
> of the same IDE cable as the disk the machine will not see the CDROM.  The
> same is true if the CDROM is placed on IDE0.
> 
> If I remove the disk and put the CDROM on the chain all by itself I can boot
> from the CDROM.  If I put the hard disk on the same IDE (or other IDE) the
> CDROM is not seen by the machine.
> 
> I've swapped drives (three times) and CDROMs (twice) and used a vast
> combination of the hardware at the house in order to correct this problem
> but the problem persists.
> 
> Any ideas?  Am I missing something?  I didn't think you could set irqs on
> CDROMs or hard disks but I checked for a conflict anyway and didn't see any
> jumpers where the irq could be modified.
> 
> Greg
> 
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