Cable select or slave?

[Devlin Carnet]

Hi, a quickie,
If I want to install both a DVD Rom, and a CD writer as internal drives, How do I configure the Cable select, Master, and slave jumpers?
Never quite got my head around this!
Cheers..

[BOAC]

My understanding is Master to enable better data transfer - unless you already have a master, of course:D

[Tormas]

Howdy,

As long as you have one master and one slave on a cable, it doesn't really matter, however you may want to put the cd writer on a different cable to the dvd and hard drive cause if you are copying cd's using the dvd rom as a reader or directly from the hard drive, you may have problems. I would also recommend setting them to master or slave not cable select (personal preference) hope this helps
CHOW

[Devlin Carnet]

Hi, Thanks guys,
so to clarify..
Put the DVD ROM on a cable with the hard drive and set it to slave?
put the CD Writer on its own and set it to Master?
Is that OK?

[Jhieminga]

Each cable will accommodate two devices. One will be master (primary), the other slave (secondary). The primary device on the first IDE cable will always (usually) be your boot device.

Adding stuff to your computer: If you add a DVD on the same cable as your existing HD, then the DVD will be slave, as you need the HD to boot from. Adding the CD to the other cable (without anything else on that cable) it will be master, as the first device on a cable should be the primary one.

The other way to do it would be to have both optical drives on the second IDE cable, with one set to master and the other to slave. But for copying purposes this might not be ideal.

Cable select could be used on all the drives, given that the hardware is new enough to support it. With this setting the chosen plug on the cable determines if the device is master or slave (I think). I never use it. Prefer to set it right myself so the computer cannot c*ck it up :ok:

[Conan the Librarian]

The way I would go is to attach up to 2 hard drives on the one lead and keep the whirly ones on the other cable, ie CD and DVD on the same lead. Whichever you want to use as the default drive, make that one the master.


Conan

[Mac the Knife]

"...install both a DVD Rom, and a CD writer as internal drives..."

Set one as master and the other as slave - it doesn't matter which for optical drives. Actually the terms are a misleading - the only difference between M and S is which one the BIOS sees first - that's why you"ll normally set up your main hard drive as master.

Today's IDE controllers on modern systems support running the master and slave device at different speeds (independent device timing), so the old canard about not putting an optical drive on the same channel as your main hard drive falls away.

FYI - Cable select requires a special cable-select cable (pin 28 on the master channel carries the CSEL signal whereas pin 28 on the slave channel is open circuit) - the drive thus "knows" which channel it's on and configures itself accordingly. Cable select on the old 40-conductor cables was never standardised, often didn't work and never really caught on.

Current 80-conductor IDE/ATA cables (80 because of separate grounds to reduce crosstalk & noise) _should_ all support CS - personally I don't bother and hardwire the drives as fixed M or S.

Suggest you don't use CS.

PS: For 2 optical drives on one IDE channel 40-conductor cables will work fine most of the time, but you can use 80-con if you like - note that you should always use 80-con on the channel you have your hard drive/s on.

Tip: If you use a removable hard drive in a "sled" or "caddy", set it up as slave on an IDE channel with an optical drive as master. Unlike hard drives, optical drives don't really care whether a slave is present or not, so you never have to change anything.

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"Bother," said Pooh as he struggled with /etc/sendmail.cf, "it never does quite what I want. I wish Christopher Robin was here."

[Devlin Carnet]

Thanks Guys,
I firstly tried the hard drive and the DVD ROM on one ribbon, and the CD writer and zip on the other.
On booting with this setup the machine reported that it could'nt find an operating system,
It is currently hard drive+Zip on one
DVD CD on the other with DVD as master and CD as slave, Seems to work OK,
Thanks again for your input, much appreciated :ok: