On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 09:16:24AM -0500, Mikes work account wrote:
> Ian,
>
> If I am to set up my second hard drive in the same box with the '98
> drive, how do I do that. I am A+ illiterate!! Do I use a ribbon cable
> that will accept two devices( the one in there now will only accept one
> device.) As I recall from some time ago, they used to have a cable that
> had wires switched or something like that for the second device. Do I
> need one like that or will a straight two device ribbon cable do the
> trick. Do I set the drive as a slave drive on the jumpers, or as a
> master as you have suggested?
Your motherboard should have two IDE connectors. One ribbon cable
goes to your harddrive. There may be another ribbon cable connected to
your CDROM drive. If both ribbon cables only have a two connectors (one
at each end), you merely need to buy one with three connectors - any
computer store should carry them.
Each IDE cable (or "bus") can have two devices on it. One device is
jumpered as "Master", the other as "Slave". Ideally, you want to have
one device on a bus, as more than one device running at the same time
will more than half the throughput of that bus. Also, every ATA device
speaks a certain speed: if you put an old device along with a new one,
both devices may only be able to use the bus at the old device's speed.
It's a least common denominator thing.
It is always best to have only ONE harddrive on a bus. Whatever
harddrive you connect on the same bus as your CDROM will have severe
performance problems when copying from a CD.
Whenever you must put two devices on a bus, you must configure one as a
Master and one as a Slave. There is no "special cable" outside of the
mystical "cable select" ribbon cable that I've personally never seen in 10
years of working with PCs.
- Ian C. Blenke <icblenke@nks.net> <ian@blenke.com>
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