which cable

[miriam]

I am installing a cd burner into someones pc. The pc only has a cd player. There are other slots where i can install the cd burner, except there are three cables for the interface connector. which cable do i use? It has windows 98, 256 MB

[butch81385]

let me see if i have this right, his computer has a cd player, a floppy drive, and a hard drive installed correct?

if so, you will want to leave everything alone that is currently installed, put the cd burner into whichever bay you want, plug in the power (you should have one hanging around inside your computer. ) then you need to plug in the ide cable (most likely a ribbon type cable). on end will be attatched to the motherboard, the other end will be attatched to the cd player

if you want the cd burner to be "master" or "primary" unplug the cable from the cd player and plug it into the cd burner, then attatch the plug in the middle of the cable to the cd player. then make sure the jumpers are set to master on the burner and slave (or secondary) on the player (manual should tell you how if you dont know)

if you want the player as master then plug the empty connector in the middle of the cable into the burner. make sure burner jumper is set to slave or secondary.

sorry if that was confusing

Is this an external burner?

if not then you can take the old cdrom out and use the cable to install the burner in it.


it should be a grey cable with a red stripe on one side, its called an IDE cable

[miriam]

I did that already. Took the cd rom out and install the cd burner, and it work find. The only problem is that i want them both to work to be able to copy from one cd to another. There are two more ide cables, aside from the one that is already connected to the cd rom. Don't know which one to use

ohhh okay i see what you want to do

you need to set the burner to be the master, and the old cd rom to be the slave. Look at the back and there should be a little plug like thing you pull out. On the cd rom it should tell you what pins make the device a master or slave

[miriam]

the cd is slave, but what i still dont know what cable to use

[whitebeard21]

did you get a new cable with the burner a slightly different color grey with 80 cables on it instead of 40? There should be two ide 40 pin cables on your board and one that only goes to your floppy drive.
one of the 40 pin cables should go to the cd and one to the harddrive. Plug both of the cd and the burner into the same cable. If you got a new 80 conductor cable use it. set the burner to master and the cd to slave or cableselect either will work.
look at the board where the ribbon cable plugs in it should say ide 1 and ide 2 next to the sockets the cable plugs into. It is best to put the cd on the ide 2.

[miriam]

I will try that

[miriam]

I connected both the cd rom and burner to the same cable. Set the burner to master and rom to slave, but only the one on the slave works.

[Bovon]

Originally posted by miriam
I connected both the cd rom and burner to the same cable. Set the burner to master and rom to slave, but only the one on the slave works.

Recheck the jumpers. If they are correct, there may be something wrong with the burner..or...the ribbon cable is not making good contact with all 40 of the pin to cable wire contacts.

Another thing I wanted to mention. Most people who do burning on the fly (CD Rom to CD RW) place the CD Rom drive as a slave to the hard drive and the burner as master on the secondary controller. The reason being, you cannot pass data in two different directions over the same wires...as you would be attempting to do if the CD Rom and CDRW drives are on the same IDE cable and both passing/receiving data at the same time.

Newer technology...such as buffer underrun correction that are today compensated for may eliminate such problems, it is still prudent to put the CD drive and burner drive on separate controllers when available.