Twokinds ARCHIVE Forums

I was wondering, for all you more experienced system builders out there: Can one have a harddrive and a CD drive on the same IDE cable connected to the motherboard? The cable is split, so it supports two drives, but I didn't know if they needed to be of similar types.

Yes. Set the plug position and jumper settings or your CD drive to "Slave".

Your computer will automatically recognize the drives appropriately, if done correctly.

Great, thanks Yash.

I find cable-select works fine most of the time.

We are talking IDE here aren't we? I think SATA has does it for you.

Yes, he is talking about IDE cables.

Modern IDE drives will handle CSEL too, but you're best off forcing master and slave.

It used to be that putting the drives on the same chain would force the faster to device to operate at the same speed as the slower device (which was why it was always recommended to keep optical drives on different IDE cables than your hard disks). I'm in the position where I'm forced to do it, but I haven't seen too many performance problems; I can't say as to whether that's due to updates to IDE controller architecture, DVD's operating at a higher datarate (I've got a DVD-RW on the chain), or that the system only runs down when I've got the drive active (which wouldn't cause many issues in this day and age).

Well, the reason I was asking was because I have an IDE harddrive and an IDE CD drive, but my new motherboard has only one IDE port. It does, however, have a split IDE ribbon. I've been using an IDE to SATA adapter for the harddrive because I wasn't sure, but I'd like to use that adapter with another harddrive and put the main on the IDE cable. I'm going to lock this thread now, since my question has been answered.

Sorry for the double post/bump, but I had another question for ye more knowledgeable hardware gurus: I know that socket AM2+ CPUs will work in socket AM2 motherboards, and I was wondering if the new socket AM2+ Phenoms might work on my mobo. The box explicitly lists a set of supported CPUs, so I don't think it does, but I figured I'd ask before completely ignoring the Phenoms.

If it is not on the list, a good rule of the thumb is it probably will not work.

If anything, check the socket type of your motherboard and compare it to your processor. If they match, there's a good chance they are compatible, but again, I would not try it.

Well, there's an AM2+ Phenom, and my motherboard is AM2. According to wikipedia, AM2+ works with AM2, so the sockets would be compatible. I'm just not sure if my motherboard would be able to figure out what to do with the extra 2 cores. xP

More problems could arise than just that, which is why I would not take such a risk.

I figured it wouldn't be a good idea. It never hurts to ask though. :3 Thanks again for your help Yash.

there are slaves and there are masters. Master cables hook up to the 1TB hard drive, or whatever you have, and slaves hook up to cd drives. If you put a master as a floppy drive, i'd say the only thing you can run is pacman, lol.

In case you hadn't noticed, that issue has been long resolved. Plus, I know the difference between a slave and master.

lol guess i havent been paying attention enough :P