master and slave probs

[Needtoknow]

Hello,
I am ends and piecing together a little computer for my son. It's my old biostar mobo, with a K6-2 333, it has a 1 point something gig Quantum we inherited somewhere. Anyway, the thought was to get a little 2 gig WD, that would allow a couple of games ( and economics $14.00 used) and the os, that would be plenty. The prob is for some reason it isn't allowing me to slave the drives. I have slaved the Quantum to my WD 30 before without a problem. Both are on Win 98se, I can hook each one up separately as master and work fine, but when I hook up a slave, the BIOS didn't detect any drive the first few times and gives a system disk error. I pull the slave off and it finds the master fine and boots right up. Both disks do this(boot okay alone).
Now, this time I have the Quantum as slave, WD as master, BIOS set to auto and lba, and now the thing has detected(first time it has detected anything with a slave hooked up) the Quantum as master, no slave, and booted right up.
I am confused. I thought the cable configuration dictates the relationship between the drives, and auto detect should take care of the rest?
I have manually set the BIOS with both drives hooked up and it doesn't "see" them. I have run the HDD auto detect with them hooked up and it goes blind.
It seems(until this last time) that as soon as a drive is placed in the slave position on the cables, the BIOS stops detecting anything and it gives a system disk error message and won't boot.
Any and all ideas/input, help, is appreciated.

[DilLy]

I apologize I didn't read thoroughly,

but did you check your jumpers?

[RJ]

I thought the cable configuration dictates the relationship between the drives

Nope. That's for the 80-conductor cable (both drives to CS, master = black, slave = grey). With the 40-conductor cable you have to manually set master and slave.

I think it is WD that has special jumper settings for master only and master with slave attached, so I'd check the jumper settings, and also make sure that master and slave are set to auto in bios.

RJ

[Needtoknow]

Hello,
You're both right, I went to WD site and got settings, set WD to setting that lets where it is on the cable decide, "cable select"
Unfortunately, it didn't change result.
BIOS set to auto, set jumpers, had WD as master Quantum/slave, got disk boot error insert system disc. I will trouble-shoot/experiment in the a.m. i.e after I sleep.
Thanks for pointing me, I was out of options.

[Cricket]

Hi Needtoknow,

Are you using a 80 wire Ultra ATA IDE cable or a 40 wire ATA IDE cable? Drive jumpers are set differently for the 2 different cables.

Have you tried setting up the hard drives on separate IDE channels? Set them up as master on both IDE channels and connect any optical drives as slave on the secondary IDE channel.

You don't have to connect the hard drives to the same IDE cable and channel.

Cricket

[Needtoknow]

Hi,
I am not sure how to tell the difference though I fear it is really obvious, like one has twice as many wires?
The two wires I have have 40 holes in the connector? A 40?
I will try the two masters, curious why this won't work on this box and it worked before with my WD 30 and this board and drive( as slave)
And if I ever add a rw cd to this box, (probably won.t, but how to configure? If I am understandiing the way you advise above(and how writers hook up? Would it be the hds as masters and the opticals as slaves?
The learning curve is the chore>
Thanks.

[MSIuser]

To start with yes there are twice as many wires, but the connecter is the same. Try setting one up as slave and the other as master using the jumpers.

When hooking up the optical drives it is better to keep them on a seperate channel as the hard drives because they will slow down the performance of the hard drives

[Cricket]

Originally posted by Needtoknow Hi, I am not sure how to tell the difference though I fear it is really obvious, like one has twice as many wires?

The easiest way to tell what kind of IDE cable you have is the older ATA33 IDE cables use one color for all 3 connectors while the Ultra ATA IDE cables use 3 different colors for the connectors...blue goes to the motherboard, black goes to the master drive and grey goes to the slave drive. Set drive jumpers to CS (cable select).

Originally posted by Needtoknow And if I ever add a rw cd to this box, (probably won.t, but how to configure? If I am understandiing the way you advise above(and how writers hook up? Would it be the hds as masters and the opticals as slaves?

In your case, if you can only get your hard drives working on separate IDE channels, then your only option is to slave the CD-RW drive to one of the hard drives. It'll work fine as long as your setup is correct. The hard drive will only slow down when both it and the CD-RW are being accessed at the same time.

Cricket

[Needtoknow]

Hi,
All connectors black.
If I set jumpers to cable select(done) and it still doesn't work, is there any point to changing cable type?
I will do the separate cable arrangement, still curious why it won't work as slave and am wondering id it's going to let me slave ANY driver at this point.
Getting ahead of myself here, but I like to understand the why? I suppose.
Thanks

[Cricket]

Hi Needtoknow,

You have a regular 40 wire ATA33 IDE cable and should use the master/slave jumper settings on the hard drive.

Some hard drives just don't like to work with other hard drive brands when on the same IDE channel.

Cricket

[Needtoknow]

Hi again,
I figured it out: the Quantum has a little tiny jumper on the outside of it as well.
It is 6 pin (same as WD), I used the same settings as the WD for cable select(1-2) and the thing worked like a charm.
Loaded up and went. Except for a yellow on the APM, and it keeps loading 2 keyboards, it's good to go.
The jumpers are really tiny.
Thanks again.

[Alfie]

If you are using a standard ide ribbon,you shouldn't use the CS option,instead jumper one drive as master and the other as slave.

[Needtoknow]

10-4,
I finally figured that out when the roles in the explorer were reversed from the physical configuration. Found one set of jumpers at the WD site, but Quantum has been purchased by Maxtor and I didn't see any info there. But while I was looking for serial numbers etc, I noticed the jumper settings right on the case. What a novel concept,eh?
Set up a slave and a master and then it was really good to go.
Now I am figuring out the logistics of the "extra" drive. I did the enum trick to reload all the hardware and figured out there's only one enum key.
So they are sharing a set of Windows so to speak.
Thanks for the jumper heads up, each step is an education in a little anti static bag, so to speak.

[Cricket]

Hi Needtoknow,

If you only set the drive jumpers to the correct master/slave positions recently, how did you have them set up before? You mentioned in your first post of this thread...."I have the Quantum as slave, WD as master". If you didn't have the drive jumpers set properly, how did you know which was the master and which was the slave?

Cricket

[Needtoknow]

If you only set the drive jumpers to the correct master/slave positions recently, how did you have them set up before?
Cricket- I started out believing that the role of master/slavewas dictated by configuration on the cable.
I have since, as a result of this thread, been enlightened as to the difference between an 80 and a 40 and their corresponding attributes.
If you're an hdd, and your cable connectors are black, it's not where you are(or who you know) that dictates your role in the computer society, but the jumper that decides your lot in the scheme of things.