If it's working leave it alone and be happy. Manufacturers of hdds allow
various configurations to allow the hdd to work by what other hardware one
already has hooked up on the system. Actually you could hook the hdd as a
slave, as long as it's jumpered properly, and make a CD-ROM a master.
To expand, many times I've added a CD-ROM writer to a system that insists
it must be a master. Sometimes it would not be seen on the OS unless I tied
it in as a slave. The drive would work fine when done that way.
And sometimes getting a system to run is akin to Han Solo pounding his
fist against the side of the consol of the Milenium Falcon to go to
Hyperdrive.

--
Jan Alter

or

"John" wrote in message
...
My eMachine 1860, running WXP, has been flakey on boot for a year now;
once it is on it is fine, but it hands on boot about 20% of the time.
Monday it simply wouldn't come up, hanging on "IOM.SYS" everytime.

I took it in to the shop. They found a cable was nicked and the jumpers
were wrong. They set them to Master and Slave. Now all is well.
However, I checked the manual and it says to set the jumpers to "CS". The
shop says the manual is wrong.
Does it matter as long as the machine is working? Presumably the nicked
cable was the problem the whole time.
Thanks.