Coconutty said:
As well as setting the jumpers on the new Hitachi drive have you checked the jumpers on the exisiting drive ?
Some Hard disc drives will require a jumper in a certain position, or maybe no jumper, when they are set as the Master drive with NO slave, and then need a different jumper setting when they are the Master with a Slave present, or even two jumpers if the Master is an ATA drive and the slave isn't - there are all sorts of combinations so check the labels on both drives which should say what is needed.
A very good piont. I know that IBM drives always wanted to know what else was around on the cable.
If you start to wilt, set the Hitachi to master only, your original HDD to master only and use the CD-ROM's cable (which I assume is on your second ATA bus) for the Hitachi. You'll at least know whether the drive is viable and can then debug the CD drive's config.
Re your RAM issue, please look up the motherboard's manual - you should get the model number from the boot screen or from the board itself - and see which combinations are palatable.
BOFH