CD-RW drive not appearing under Win98

[lunardusk]

I just bought my mom an internal IDE CD-RW drive for her birthday. The problem is, I cannot install it. I have installed plenty of drives before (I work at my college's InfoSys department, I get paid to do such things). The computer is an old Gateway Performace 500 running a P3 @ 500 MHZ. Before I put in the drive, this was the configuration:

2nd Motherbard IDE port: DVD-ROM drive on first connector & Zip drive on 2nd connector

1st Motherboard IDE port: empty

Expansion cards: Nividia TNT-2 Video, Sound Blaster Live, 56K modem, Promise Ultra66 IDE controller

Hard Disk: a 20GB IBM DeskStar attached to the first IDE port on the Ultra66 and jumper set as "device 0 (master)" under the 16 head section

I put the CD-RW on the primary IDE slot on the motherboard using a fresh IDE cable, thinking it would work. Neither the BIOS nor Win98SE are seeing it. Here is what I have tried:

Updating the PhoenixBIOS to the latest version through the Gateway website.

Trying both aster and slave settings on the CD-RW.

Removing the Ultra66.

Connecting the Hard Disk and CD-RW directly to the motherboard's first IDE port.

Trying a fresh cable.

Connecting only the CD-RW drive to the first IDE port both as slave and master.

The drive is getting power and is brand new. I don't think the problem is the drive. I have also tried installing the DOS driver for the drive. The PC either freezing on loading windows or lets out a long beep from the internal speaker until I shut it off. As you can imagine, this is pretty embarrasing. I have tried Gateway support, and they say it should be working. The drive is a KHypermedia KHCRW522452. Please help!

 

[VacuumTubeEra]

You may be asking for too much from the power supply. That can cause some very stange symptoms, maybe what you are seeing. Try reducing the electical load by temporarily disconnecting both the DVD-ROM and Zip drive. Then connect the CD-RW to that IDE channel and see what happens.

 

[maultier]

The key point you make is that it isn't detected by the bios. I'd suggest following SlideRuleEra's suggestion to minimize the machine. I would also suggest removal of all the pci cards. We could have a card loading us down that only surfaces when you try to install the cd. It could be a loading problem or perhaps a logic problem. You have to expertise to isolate. I've had some strange problems corrected by removing an unsuspected pci card. I'd also think about resetting the bios to factory defaults (after noting the current settings) to see if that buys you anything. Good luck.