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"Installing a 2nd Disc Drive"

I'm fairly sure how to do this, though I'll beg for help anyway.

My dad bought a CD/DVD-ROM recently, and he wants it installed.
The instructions are, quite frankly, crap.
Considering the only language is Swahili or something. Not a word of English.

So, just to cover everything so that it looks like I sort of know what I'm talking about...

You've got your E-IDE cable, right? That goes into the motherboard... somewhere.
The PSU thing is fine for me, so that's ok.
Then there's this other little cable which goes into the hard drive or something, right?
And there's the whole Master/Slave malarky.
Which I've no idea about.

So if you could just clarify everything please, people.
Cheers.

Ho ho.

Glad I could help, Azul.

You're welcome. Erm ...

Everything went perfectly.
Thanks for your help, everyone.

All I did was follow where the wire from the first drive went - and there was an identical slot right next to it.
So that's where it went.
:-D

Your other cable could be to plug into your sound card.
Try it anywhere it fits. If it doesn't fit anywhere ignore it - everything should work okay without this other cable as long as the IDE one is plugged in.

I've got another cable, and judging by the german, it's the digital cable apparently.
Where it goes is on the left of the Ma/Sl bit - but where does the other end go?
Ta.

Thanks people.
I'm about to go do this, so ta.

Azul wrote:

> You've got your E-IDE cable, right? That goes into the motherboard...
> somewhere.

Basically, look for an IDE slot that is free of other cables if posible (Ill say why in a sec)

> The PSU thing is fine for me, so that's ok.
> Then there's this other little cable which goes into the hard drive
> or something, right?

Thats the PSU thingy as you say.

> And there's the whole Master/Slave malarky.
> Which I've no idea about.

Right, if at all posible you do not want to slave a CD drive on the same IDE channel (Socket) as the Hard Drive, as Hard Drives run at much faster transfer rates than CD drives (which usally run at 33MB/s rather than the slowest you will get a Hard Drive running at is proabaly 66MB/s), so it could double loading times using the CD drive on the same channel. Simply plug the CD drive via the IDE cable into another IDE socket (motherboards less than 3-4 years old should definitaly have 2) and you won't have to worry about slaving. If that isn't posible I believe the prior post tells you what to do.

> So if you could just clarify everything please, people.
> Cheers.

It's done by a jumper setting. On the back on the second CD/DVD drive move the jumper to the slave plug. If you have a 3 way IDE cable you can leave the main one plugged into the Motherboard and then just run the secondary into the second CD drive, if not you won't need to mess around with master and slave you can just select a primary and a secondary setup which once again is done with the jumper settings. Turn the drive round and look at the back, should be six little pins in blocks of two and above it will have either a full definition or something like 'M P S' above each set of pins. It's really that simple. Make sure you have the first drive set to master (which is where it should be already) and then move the jumper on the second drive to secondary. Depending on how old the Motherboard is you may need to go into the Bios (DEL or F12) to select it, all the ones I have done do it automatically though.