hard drive,dvd configurations

[engineer]

hello. bare with me people.i have only built one system and am still in learning stage. not sure how my cables should be set up.i am running (2) harddrives seagate 120 gigs, sony dvd,generic floppy.how would you configure your cable set ups,jumpers? msi k8n neo platinum,amd 64 3200,sony dru720a dvd drive.

[Cricket]

What kind of hard drives are those? IDE or SATA?

:) Cricket

[engineer]

hello cricket. they are ide.

[TwoRails]

The two ways are to running the HDs on one channel, and the optical on the other. With 3 drives, though, I'd go with a HD on each channel and slave the optical to the HD on either channel.

[Cricket]

Set the jumper on both hard drives to CS (cable select). Connect them to the 80 wire IDE cable...blue connector goes to the motherboard, black is the master connector, grey is the slave connector. Red stripe on ribbon cable orients toward pin 1 on the motherboard and hard drives. Plug the IDE cable into the primary IDE controller.

If you're using a 80 wire IDE cable for the DVD drive, set the jumper to CS and connect it to the black connector. Blue connector plugs into the secondary IDE controller.

If you're using a 40 wire IDE cable for the DVD drive, set the jumper to master and connect it to any connector on the IDE cable. Plug the cable into the secondary IDE controller.

Floppy just plugs into the floppy cable and then the cable plugs into the floppy controller. Just make sure the red stripe is oriented to pin 1 on the motherboard and floppy drive. The end with the twist goes to the floppy drive.

:) Cricket

[engineer]

okay. thanks cricket,tworails.now one last question here. my floppy shows fail in bios,but shows working properly in disk management.seems when i put a disk in floppy it does not work.what am i doing wrong.

[Cricket]

Is the floppy light always on?

Do you have the power cable connected to the floppy drive?

:) Cricket

[engineer]

yes cricket light is on,power to floppy.

[Cricket]

The light is on all the time? Then the floppy cable isn't installed correctly. Make sure the red stripe is oriented to pin 1 on the motherboard and floppy drive. You may have to remove the floppy drive and visually check to see which side pin 1 is...it's not standardized on floppy drives.

:) Cricket

[engineer]

cricket the cable is correct, i even switched floppy drives. still same problem.light stays on,bios tells me floppy drive fail 40.

[Cricket]

Normally when the LED on the floppy is always on that's an indication that the floppy cable is installed incorrectly. Make sure that the red stripe is oriented to pin 1 on both ports (motherboard and floppy drive) and the end with the twist is on the floppy drive side.

If everything is correct, try another floppy cable.

:) Cricket

[engineer]

cricket i know this sounds stupid but what do you mean with the twist? i tried both ends.

[Cricket]

This is the twisted end. (http://www.youcanbuildapc.com/images/floppycabletwist.jpg) The red stripe must line up to pin 1 on both ports (motherboard and floppy drive).

:) Cricket

[engineer]

okay cricket. my next step is to try another cable. thanks i appreciate all your help here.

[engineer]

hello again.tried a different floppy cable.green light does not stay on,but now nothing happens when disk is inserted. purchased one of those ide cards from newegg
(promise ultra 100).i have been trying to install the drivers .since having problem wiyh floppy i copied onto a cd.this did not even work.with this card in the slots i get an error in bios telling me that "ntldr is missing" and cannot get past this point.i disconnected my slane drive from the primary master and now i am able to get into windows.had windows running yesterday even with both drives connected.can anyone tell me what is it i am doing wrong?

[Marke522]

engineer, I was just reading through some old posts, and was wondering what the current status was of your computer. Did you fix the ntldr message yet?

Are you able to get a floppy working? Try the floppy drives and cables on a different pc if you can to make sure there is nothing wrong with the hardware.

I had that same message once, about a year ago, I'll try to remember how I fixed it and repost or edit.

EDIT --

I remember how I fixed it. I downloaded an XP boot disc using another computer from this web site (http://www.tinyempire.com/shortnotes/files/ntldr_missing.htm), and re-wrote my boot record. But you'll have to get the floppy dirve working. Or maybe you can move the harddrive into another pc to fix it?