The AM Forum

My main Dell computer had a bad D drive (CD DVD) a few months ago. I replaced the bad D drive with a Sony DRU-842A and the install was simple and smooth. Everything worked fine. A couple months later, I noticed the E (CD DVD) drive was beginning to work intermittently and finally yesterday was done. I replaced it with another Sony DRU-842A drive and then the computer wouldn't recognize either drive. Clicking on
"my computer" revealed that neither existed. I tried unhooking the E ... then the D was recognized and worked perfect. I unhooked it and hooked up only the E and it worked fine, but showed as a D drive.

I hooked them both back up and now neither are recognized. What gives? It seems to me the drives are both good and working right individually as D, so they or the IDE ribbon cable aren't the problem. In "add hardware" they show as properly installed, so not being a computer expert this has be baffled as how to get them both working again. Any suggestions?

Did you configure the second drive as "slave"?

See Situation B in Quick Start Guide attached below

Hi,

It sounds like you are using an IDE cable to connect these drives. If they share the same IDE cable, then one will need to be designated "master", and the other "slave" in order to allow them to be detected. The other option is to use the "cable select" option. Look for a three position jumper on the back of each drive to set these drive parameters.

Should be fine once that is taken care of!

73,

Rob W1AEX

I have actually had a drive controller on a MB go bad once... but that's a rarity.  The first step would be to make sure it is configured properly (as everyone has suggested, MA/CS/SL).  After ensuring the pins are set properly try completely uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers.  Out of curiosity have you installed any new software or drivers recently?

If that does not produce results replace the IDE cable with another new one (I'll admit it would be one in a million chance to have a brand new one fail but it does happen) and clean the pins with DeOxit.  If you reach this point and it still doesn't work there are two options bad drive or bad controller.  If you have a buddy that will loan you a drive that is known to be good and it works it is probably a bad controller, which would involve a new MB.

Thanks gentlemen, that was the problem. I did the install last night and never thought of the drive being set for master at factory and needing the connector change over for slave. It is my wife's computer and she had it all ready for me to do the removing of the old drive and installing this one and even thought she read the instructions, she overlooked this. She blamed me for damaging the ribbon IDE cable and I proved her wrong because it still worked on the drives. I was informed this is still my fault for not reading instructions and making the change over. Anyway she thanks you gentlemen.

Glad you're back up and running BUT when you had CD DVD in brackets I thought you were talking about the CD DVD burners. NOT HDD ( the slave / master thing).

Fred

Great! Now that industry is moving toward political correctness and we have moved from male and female connectors to pin and hole (and "gender-agnostic" instead of sexless for those GR types), what will become of the slave and the master drives?

   ' I was informed this is still my fault "

Yes, this is the conundrum of married life ...........

klc

"what will become of the slave and the master drives"

Probably to husband and the wife drives
or
Dependent and independent drives
or
________ and ___________ drives (Insert your own nouns)

The computer thing seems to be driven by a human element. Master/Slave, Farms, Kernels, dot and dot-dot, parent, etc, etc.

Fred

Not just the human element ; An apple a day keeps peach trees away.

Fruity stuff too as well as the anal retentive.

Father drive and child drive. We do have motherboard that controls all.

i remember my first week in training at the phone company.  I was told that due to a lawsuit by some lady lineman we were not allowed to refer to pliers as dikes... Diangonal Cutter was the accepted term.
I still call em dikes.  both the tool and the people.

yep.. forgot that one from work..

Oh, no, "pin and hole"? That will never do; how gauche! Please, we must all ascribe to the new way of thinking!

The correct terms (sniff) are "Plug" and "Receptacle".

And, (sniff), while we're on the subject, please do not mention such dated terms as "master" or "slave". Such things never really existed and we must all correct our recollections!

From now on, we will refer to "Leader" and "Facilitator" drives.

Bill "Goldstein's agents have been at work!" Horne, W1AC

I recall a few years ago before the UK had caught up with or even supassed the US in political correctness,  I ran into some article on the web that could be viewed both from a US site and a UK site.  The US site referred to the distinction between males and females as "gender".  The UK site referred to it as "sex".

I believe "sex" is the proper term.  "Gender" has nothing to do with male vs female.  It is a grammatical term that means category or class.  We borrowed the French equivalent of the word, genre, in its proper context, as in the genre of a play. 

In some languages, all nouns fall into one of two or more distinct classes or genders, that don't necessarily have anything to do with males and females.  For example, in French, the word for table is feminine, while the word for book is masculine.  These  classes of nouns unfortunately got tagged with the names "masculine" and "feminine" because the words that named male humans just happened to have a tendency to fall into one category while those that named female humans tended to fall into the other.  But there are exceptions.  In German, the name for young girl, something like mädschen, is not feminine, but neuter.  In French, the words for necktie and man's shirt are feminine, while the word for a woman's blouse is masculine.  The word for teacher is masculine, whether the person is male or female.

I once studied an African language spoken in what is now Malawi.  It is in the same family of languages as Swahili, and has used a writing system only since the 19th century.  It has nine classes of nouns, and its grammatical structure is more complex than that of most European languages.

Don, I appreciate the interesting post. It is interesting how this thread developed from a technical computer question to a language discussion that I find more interesting than my computer question.

In Spanish the word for gypsy is the masculine gitano. Even though the female Spanish gypsy is called gitana individually, as a group they are called gitano if a male gypsy is present. I once referred to a gathering of 11 gitana's with 1 gitano present as a gitana party and was quickly corrected.

I like my steaks medium rare, done up on a grill with mesquite.

I'm not fussy what they are cooked on as long as it is clean. Medum Well for me.. Seriously I can't tell the difference what they were cooked on. wood, charcoal, in the oven (juices aside), on a skillet, the result might be slightly different texture but I don't taste the difference.

A good steak will taste good, almost no matter how it's cooked. Just don't over-cook it!

Cable select works for me - I use it as much as possible.

So -- let me see if I have this right:

Mommie board controls
daddy drive which takes precedence over the:
kiddy drive -- both of which is controlled by Mommie in the final analysis.  Got it, I think.  I'm depressed -- think I'll go hide in my cable select closet. ;D

Al

I'd take Eritrean food over a steak dinner.

Never had it. What's would a typical Eritrean meal include?  I like some of the dishes from northen African countries - falafel, babakanoosh, tabooleh, and lots of good lamb dishes I don't remember the names on.

slow animals.  ;D

I've had Ethiopian food which is heavy on the spicy vegetables, scooped up with a piece of spongy bread instead of utensils, but also there are meat dishes. I'll bet Eritrean is similar.