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#1
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Optical Drive: IDE Secondary Master vs Slave
When I built this computer I put in 3 removable hard drive bays and 1
NEC 3540 optical drive. I put the optical drive as IDE Secondary Slave, mainly because it would only fit in the bottom bay because of the mainboard getting in the way - so I cabled it as Secondary Slave for convenience. Most of the time the only HD is the Primary Master. Sometimes the optical drive is not be recognized by the BIOS, especially when I inserted a CD during the POST operation (I set the BIOS to give a full POST). I jumpered it as Slave to make sure the BIOS would see it. But that did not help. The Secondary Master is unpopulated. Now I have it in the Secondary Master position and it appears that it is always recognized no matter what I do. In the past optical drives were fussy and needed to be the Secondary Master or they would not work at all. It would appear that the new drives do work if you don't do anything to them but they are still somewhat fussy. Is it still a hard and fast rule to make the optical drive the Secondary Master? |
#2
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Bob wrote:
When I built this computer I put in 3 removable hard drive bays and 1 NEC 3540 optical drive. I put the optical drive as IDE Secondary Slave, mainly because it would only fit in the bottom bay because of the mainboard getting in the way - so I cabled it as Secondary Slave for convenience. Most of the time the only HD is the Primary Master. Sometimes the optical drive is not be recognized by the BIOS, especially when I inserted a CD during the POST operation (I set the BIOS to give a full POST). I jumpered it as Slave to make sure the BIOS would see it. But that did not help. The Secondary Master is unpopulated. Now I have it in the Secondary Master position and it appears that it is always recognized no matter what I do. In the past optical drives were fussy and needed to be the Secondary Master or they would not work at all. It would appear that the new drives do work if you don't do anything to them but they are still somewhat fussy. Is it still a hard and fast rule to make the optical drive the Secondary Master? It is my, perhaps uninformed, opinion that for a given controller, you should not have a slaved device, without a master. Some hard drives have a special "single" jumper setting, but every optical drive I've seen would be jumpered as a master. (Or possibly cable select if you have "selecting" cables. In that case, you should attach the single optical drive to the master plug.) |
#3
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"Bob" wrote in message ... When I built this computer I put in 3 removable hard drive bays and 1 NEC 3540 optical drive. I put the optical drive as IDE Secondary Slave, mainly because it would only fit in the bottom bay because of the mainboard getting in the way - so I cabled it as Secondary Slave for convenience. Most of the time the only HD is the Primary Master. Sometimes the optical drive is not be recognized by the BIOS, especially when I inserted a CD during the POST operation (I set the BIOS to give a full POST). I jumpered it as Slave to make sure the BIOS would see it. But that did not help. The Secondary Master is unpopulated. Now I have it in the Secondary Master position and it appears that it is always recognized no matter what I do. In the past optical drives were fussy and needed to be the Secondary Master or they would not work at all. It would appear that the new drives do work if you don't do anything to them but they are still somewhat fussy. Is it still a hard and fast rule to make the optical drive the Secondary Master? The cable select setting would be your best option here. Be sure you jumper your Optical AND any HD you put in the bay as cable select. Also, some Bios' are flaky when it comes to removable HD's when something else is chained as slave (or as CS but connected to the middle of the IDE cable) so see if you can configure it (might need to pick up a longer IDE cable) so that the Optical is at the end of the cable and the removable HD bay is on the middle connector and both devices are set to cable select, then you shouldn't have any problems. -- "I don't cheat to survive. I cheat to LIVE!!" - Alceryes |
#4
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"Grinder" wrote:
It is my, perhaps uninformed, opinion that for a given controller, you should not have a slaved device, without a master.... That may be controller-specific, but in my PC, a Dell Dimension with and a motherboard controller and a SIIG PCI card controller, the machine can boot from a lone HD jumpered as Slave. I do this routinely each time I complete the cloning of the primary HD as a backup and then subsequently boot the clone for the first time with the "parent" OS invisible to it. There is really no role difference between Master and Slave - they are just flags to the controller so the controller can tell the two devices apart when they're on the same channel (i.e. same cable). If the two settings had been named Maude and Shirley, a generation of newbies would have avoided confusion about the significance of those settings. The only other significance of Master/Slave is attributed by some BIOSes, maybe *most* BIOSes, by defaulting their HD boot order to [ch.0 Master], [ch. 0 Slave], [ch. 1 Master], [ch. 1 Slave], in that order. Of course, this boot order (sometimes called "boot sequence") lasts only until manually reset by the user via keyboard commands to the BIOS. What may have led to the "no Slave without a Master" superstition is the rule to avoid signal reflections within the cable - "no device at the intermediary connector without a device at the end connector". Since an unoccupied end connector presents an unterminated line (i.e. infinite impedance) which causes signal reflections, the length of cable between the two connectors can present just enough reflected signal delaty to confuse the device at the inter- mediate connector. (The specification that this length of cable be between 5- and 6-inches long is probably an attempt to minimize this effect.) The rule therefore specifies that a lone device be put at the end connector - where it would, if Cable Select is used, take on the Master setting. Otherwise, the device at the end connector could be jumpered as Slave with no bad results. As for the necessity of an optical device to be set as Master, I can't imagine why that should be. If it's controlled by an IDE controller, IDE specs apply, and I'm unaware of anything in those specs which are specific to optical devices. *TimDaniels* |
#5
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On Wed, 7 Sep 2005 11:03:05 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote: As for the necessity of an optical device to be set as Master, I can't imagine why that should be. If it's controlled by an IDE controller, IDE specs apply, and I'm unaware of anything in those specs which are specific to optical devices. I once had a Mitsui CD-RW and I could not get it to work as slave no matter what I tried. I wrote tech support and they replied that the unit MUST be a master. The drive was crap to begin with but I did manage to get it to work as master. But then I could not use anything as slave on that channel. When I asked tech support, they replied that not only must the unit be a master, it must be the only unit on the channel. The optics were loose inside and rattled when shaken gently. It also made weird whistling sounds when it first powered up, like it was making a pass at you. Just what I needed - a gay CD drive. I was so happy when I finally got rid of that piece of **** that I celebrated by taking an large hammer to it. |
#6
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On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 15:44:44 GMT, "Alceryes"
wrote: The cable select setting would be your best option here. Be sure you jumper your Optical AND any HD you put in the bay as cable select. I tried that but unfortunately the removable bay I have connected to the same IDE channel is for older HDs that do not support CS. So I had to jumper the HDs as master and the CD-RW as slave. Now that I have the roles reversed, I have not had any problems when the unit comes on line. It seems to work more reliably as master, especially when there is nothing else on the channel, which is most of the time. While I have your attention, I have another problem with that NEC 3540 drive, even when it is master. Some software I have reboots the computer after partially installing itself, and then prompts for the CD when it gets further along. I click the button, but the unit won't respond. I have never had that problem with CD-RW units before. Any ideas why the NEC 3540 seems to die after a reboot? |
#7
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"Bob" wrote in message ... On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 15:44:44 GMT, "Alceryes" wrote: The cable select setting would be your best option here. Be sure you jumper your Optical AND any HD you put in the bay as cable select. I tried that but unfortunately the removable bay I have connected to the same IDE channel is for older HDs that do not support CS. So I had to jumper the HDs as master and the CD-RW as slave. Now that I have the roles reversed, I have not had any problems when the unit comes on line. It seems to work more reliably as master, especially when there is nothing else on the channel, which is most of the time. While I have your attention, I have another problem with that NEC 3540 drive, even when it is master. Some software I have reboots the computer after partially installing itself, and then prompts for the CD when it gets further along. I click the button, but the unit won't respond. I have never had that problem with CD-RW units before. Any ideas why the NEC 3540 seems to die after a reboot? Is this something that happens frequently or only with one particular piece of software? Is this a Windows XP system? Is there some burning software that might be 'locking' the drive? -- "I don't cheat to survive. I cheat to LIVE!!" - Alceryes |
#8
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#9
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On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 21:24:19 GMT, "Alceryes"
wrote: Any ideas why the NEC 3540 seems to die after a reboot? Is this something that happens frequently or only with one particular piece of software? I have seen it happen with regularity when I attempt an In-Place Upgrade from the Win2K installation disc. When you do an IPU, you begin just like you are going to build a new Win2K but you select Repair after Windows discovers an existing system. The setup then copies some files and reboots. When you come back to where you left off, Windows prompts you to put the setup disc in and click on a button. That's when the optical drive is unresponsive. I have also noticed it happening on other programs which are unable to get the drive to come alive. I have to activate it with a program I know works and then it will respond to the other ones.. Is this a Windows XP system? Win2K/SP4. Is there some burning software that might be 'locking' the drive? With Win2K setup there is nothing other than Windows. When this happens with programs, I sometimes will reboot to get a fresh start, but it does no good. It's as though the programs issue a command to the drive but the drive does not recognize it. It could be the BIOS - I do not rule that out. |
#10
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On Thu, 08 Sep 2005 01:13:25 GMT, kony wrote:
Why not jumper the CDRW as master and the removable HDD as slave? That's what I did. The slave is a removable drive bay which is most often empty. Generally it is better to have the static drive as a master, unless of course it's a drive that has different Master vs. Single drive jumper settings like a WD, but then it can do CS. This particular bay is reserved for old WD drives that don't respond to CS. There is no provision on the drive legend and when I wrote WD about the matter, they ignored me. So I jumper it as slave. While I have your attention, I have another problem with that NEC 3540 drive, even when it is master. Some software I have reboots the computer after partially installing itself, Is the windows "restart on error" setting enabled? (Presuming win2k or xp)? If so, disable it and note whether there's a bluescreen error stop code and the log in Event Viewer. and then prompts for the CD when it gets further along. I click the button, but the unit won't respond. I have never had that problem with CD-RW units before. Click what button, the "OK or Continue" (whatever) on the software installer? Seems more like a buggy installer than anything... presuming you don't have aggressive system protection set up like an Antivirus program that interferes with the installer. I have used the Win2K In-Place Upgrade a couple times before and not had any problem. I do not believe the Win2K Setup program knows about the anti-virus at the earlier stages, but it is something to be aware of. Any ideas why the NEC 3540 seems to die after a reboot? Did you mean that you manually press the eject button and then it doesn't respond? No, I mean I press the OK button on the dialog that prompted me to put the setup disc in the unit. But nothing happens. That can sometimes happen if a util has locked the drive (some type of software command). Commonly things like a UDF filesystem app could do it. UDF has two meanings. Which one are you using? What software is installed? More than I care to enumerate. If there is anything for UDF or packet writing, you might dig deeper into whether that's the source, though I have no further specifics that might help. The Win2K setup software is not accessible to the user. It is a blind setup. |
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