need some help installing a new cd rom driive

[Guest_imported]

My current CD rom drive is buggered and i need to replace it. I am having some problems installing the new cd rom drive.

Is it ok simply to replace the existing one? using the sound card cable/ power and the 40 pin one (dont know what its called) using the existing ones and simply swapping them over to the new one. Will it bugger anything up if i do a straight swap? or do i have to put it into the slot below.

Plus could someone explain the difference between the ide ports and the difference between master and slave.

I looked inside and there are 2 ports on the motherboard. one of those platic cable thingy's goes to the a:\ drive and the hard drive, the other port the one above goes into the existing cd rom drive. I noticed that there are 40 pin connecters spare and a power one spare to put maybe into a new drive except i couldnt see where the new sound card lead would go.

Any help is much apperciated thanks.

 

[crisc]

It's fine to use the IDE cable from your old CDROM (in fact, if you use that one and have problems with the new one, you may have discovered that you just needed a new IDE cable, not a CDROM drive!) Just connected the IDE and sound card cables to your new CDROM and away you go.

On almost all motherboards, 2 IDE channels are provided for data transmission. By your description, one IDE channel is connecting to your hard drive, and the other is going into your CDROM. Since you currently only have 2 devices, this is the optimal configuration, each device on it's own channel.
However, each IDE channel can support 2 devices, a master and a slave. If you add a third device, you would add it as a slave (or master) to one of your IDE channels. You can only add 4 devices this way, but there are IDE expansion cards available to exceed this limitation.

Hope you found this info useful, good luck.

 

[DBSSP]

You should be able to just do a replacement with no problem at all. You can use the existing connectors and cables. Master and slave pertains to which drive has the ability to place data transfer on the cable first. Normally a hardrive is on the middle cable connector and it is set as a master, the cdrom would be placed the same way on the second cable, as long as no other drives are present. With the back of the drive facing you, there are two small keyed plug holes to the left, these are the audio connectors, the small one is for a digital connector and the wide plug is for analog signal. 2 and 4 pins respectively. The next is for the ide cable (the wide area in the middle). Most drives are keyed these days but be sure to seat the ide plug evenly! Otherwise you may bend the pins. If the CDrom is the only drive on the cable, set the jumper to master. This should be what you need to know...is there anything I missed? Anybody who elaborates on my slave-master explanation might do a much better job, but I think that's the basics of it. Jay

"Jeezus-sqeezits Bob!"

 

[ceh4702]

Some newer CDROM drives may have both a Digital audio jack and the older kind. Usually if you run a cable to the sound card you use the oder style which is not digital. Try an Aux-In connector on the sound card. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[billybee]

I believe if you'll look more closely you'll see that the CD ROM and the Hard drive are on one cable and the floppy is on the other as the two cables have different numbers of pins (34 for floppy, 40 for HDD)
You can't have two devices set to master on one IDE cable- they would be fighting over which has control of the cable. One must be master and one slave. (most devices these days also have a "cable select" jumper setting as well) You could have a master on the primary IDE port and a master on the secondary IDE port with two different cables- that is if you have a primary and a secondary port.
Bill B Bill B
A+, Network+, MCP

 

[jjjthird]

<.... Normally a hardrive is on the middle cable connector and it is set as a master,..........>

Sounds good to me except I thought the master was on the &quot;end&quot; connection on the ribbon

 

[DBSSP]

JJJThird, you may be right, about it being on the end, I am just going from the top of my head...as far as using seperate cables,...Bill B, most drives when you buy them retail, come with a new IDE cable. As long as you have two IDE channels on the board you should be fine in keeping your drives seperate. This is considering that there are only 2 IDE drives, the HD and the CD. Does this make a little better sense? Jay

&quot;Jeezus-sqeezits Bob!&quot;