Re: [LUG] Changing the DVD drive

On 23 April 2013 17:46, Neil Winchurst <barnaby@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 23/04/13 17:18, bad apple wrote:

On 23/04/13 17:10, Neil Winchurst wrote:

On 23/04/13 15:21, bad apple wrote:

That's not that old actually, some of us here on this list have got
proper antiques in our garages! A 2006 vintage machine will quite
possibly have both SATA and IDE ports on the mainboard and will in all
likelihood boot from USB as well.

Can we just clarify then, is the replacement DVD drive you have a SATA
or an IDE unit?
Does your motherboard have SATA, IDE or both types of connectors?

I have now looked in the tower. The board is marked ASRock
939Dual-SATA2. Is that info any use? I do not know enough about this
to recognise if there are any IDE ports present, though I cannot see
any likely candidates.

There is one ribbon cable attached to the motherboard but not attached
to anything else. The loose end, female, would plug into one port on
the back of the new drive, it appears. But I don't to force anything.
You can see how little I know, never been interested in the hardware.

Neil

Ah, perfect... here are your specs:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/ULi/939Dual-SATA2/

You do indeed have SATA and IDE interfaces on that board, so you're in
luck. Sounds like you even have a disconnected IDE ribbon ready and
waiting for it as well - just plug it in, plug in a spare molex (the
4-pin plug from the PSU) and you should be good to go. Don't put the
side back on the case yet though as you may have more fiddling to do.
Specifically, look on the back of the DVD drive next to the power/data
sockets, there will be a jumper block. The DVD drive will have a sticker
on it with the legend for the jumper setup - check and make sure that
it's setup for "cable select", this will save a lot of potential pain.

When I was given the drive I was warned that it was set as 'slave', but I might have to set it to 'Master'. No mention was made of 'Cable select' although I can indeed see the slot for it. Will Master not do?

With Parallel ATA, a single cable can support 2 devices - a Master and a Slave. Typically the ribbon cable would have 3 connectors on it - one for the motherboard, one for master (at the other end) and one for slave (in the middle, but usually closer to the master than the motherboard end of the cable).

http://support.seagate.com/kbimg/5371-16.jpg

Ideally you want your device(s) to be configured correctly - a slave device in the correct position on the cable and with the correct jumper setting. If you only have the one device, and if the device in question does not have a "single" mode (some harddrive have master/slave/cable select/single) then set it as master.

Grant.