CD Drive Problem - Ground?

[jeff.shack]

I'm at a loss for answers. I have a new CD burner that I installed in
an old box. Worked great. I finished building a new system in a Lian
Li case. I took the burner out of the old box and installed the burner
(cable select at the end of the cable) in the new box and it didn't
work. No light at boot and not detected in device manager. I pulled it
out, set it on cardboard and hooked it up as it was before and it
worked great. I put it back in the box and again nothing, not even a
light.

This case has been used for two other systems over the past three
years. 480 watt PS. Windows XP SP2. Gigabyte board. Any thoughts? I
can provide more hardware details if necessary but I am not at home at
the time of this writing.

 

[Gerard Bok]

I'm at a loss for answers. I have a new CD burner that I installed in
an old box. Worked great. I finished building a new system in a Lian
Li case. I took the burner out of the old box and installed the burner
(cable select at the end of the cable) in the new box and it didn't
work. No light at boot and not detected in device manager. I pulled it
out, set it on cardboard and hooked it up as it was before and it
worked great. I put it back in the box and again nothing, not even a
light.

So: your first suspect would be the 'new' PSU. Or the cable that
runs from it to power your drive.

First test: when the power is on, press the eject button on the
drive itself. Any action ?

 

[John McGaw]

I'm at a loss for answers. I have a new CD burner that I installed in
an old box. Worked great. I finished building a new system in a Lian
Li case. I took the burner out of the old box and installed the burner
(cable select at the end of the cable) in the new box and it didn't
work. No light at boot and not detected in device manager. I pulled it
out, set it on cardboard and hooked it up as it was before and it
worked great. I put it back in the box and again nothing, not even a
light.

This case has been used for two other systems over the past three
years. 480 watt PS. Windows XP SP2. Gigabyte board. Any thoughts? I
can provide more hardware details if necessary but I am not at home at
the time of this writing.

My first guess would be mounting screws being just a bit too long. Of
course if your case doesn't use screws that guess would be right out...

 

[Paul]

I'm at a loss for answers. I have a new CD burner that I installed in
an old box. Worked great. I finished building a new system in a Lian
Li case. I took the burner out of the old box and installed the burner
(cable select at the end of the cable) in the new box and it didn't
work. No light at boot and not detected in device manager. I pulled it
out, set it on cardboard and hooked it up as it was before and it
worked great. I put it back in the box and again nothing, not even a
light.

This case has been used for two other systems over the past three
years. 480 watt PS. Windows XP SP2. Gigabyte board. Any thoughts? I
can provide more hardware details if necessary but I am not at home at
the time of this writing.

With the CD drive connected, but sitting next to your computer, use a multimeter
to measure the voltage from computer chassis (ground) to the metal casing
on the CDROM. Is there zero volts DC difference ? Or some other voltage ?
Now, flip to the AC volts scale. See anything non-zero there ?

Ground has multiple connections inside a computer case. The safety ground on
a three wire cable, should have continuity to the case chassis. The black wires
in the main power cable, bring the motherboard to ground potential. The plated
mounting holes of the motherboard are grounded, and are allowed to make
contact with the brass standoffs (also at ground) used in computer
cases. So there should be lots of grounding going on in the computer case.

If the chassis of the CDROM is at some other potential, it could mean
an internal signal in the CDROM, has somehow become connected to its
chassis.

I took the spare IDE CDROM that sits in a box next to my desk, and did a
test on it. Using my multimeter, on the ohms scale, I measured from the
chassis, to the two center (ground) pins of the four pin Molex. It reads
zero ohms, meaning the chassis of the CDROM is grounded on purpose. You
could try that test as well, and see if yours reads zero.

Paul

 

[jeff.shack]

My first guess would be mounting screws being just a bit too long. Of
course if your case doesn't use screws that guess would be right out...

Good thought. I put shorter screws in but did not help the situation.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Jeff

 

[Gerard Bok]

Good thought. I put shorter screws in but did not help the situation.

Once you 'screwed' a unit with exessive length screws, there is
no way back, unfortunately.

 

[~misfit~]

Somewhere on teh intarweb "kony" typed:

On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:16:52 -0700 (PDT),


If I understand your description correctly, you're saying
the drive worked with one old system and that system's PSU &
case, then with a new board/PSU/case it didn't work, then
you took it out of the case and it worked again with the old
system or with the new one?

Where these screws you used anything out of the ordinary?
Did they come with the drive? Where they especially long?
Where they installed in the top or bottom row of holes?
Generally, if installed in the top row of holes there isn't
any chance of shorting out anything in any drives I've seen
as the PSB is much closer to the bottom holes. Was there
excessive force needed to cram the drive into the case bay,
perhaps the bay was a little too narrow?

Is the drive still under warranty? If not, you might want
to take the bottom cover off to see if there looks to be any
damage to the PCB where the screws were installed.

Inspect the drive's power plug and mating PSU connector to
be sure there isn't excessive play in these nor that there
are any cracks in the PCB that might occur from a tight
fitting plug flexing the PCB upon insertion or removal.

Try the drive without the data cable connected, in the case.
See if the eject button works, and the play button if so
equipped.

Try the drive jumpered as Master, and try it slaved to a
hard drive jumpered as master or CS. What model of
motherboard is this? I ever so vaguely recall some kind of
issue with the JMicron IDE controller (think it was on a P35
chipset board) not working with an optical drive as
expected, though I can't recall if the drive seemed dead
without any lights or if it just didn't show up. Come to
think of it I can't now recall if the problem was with the
drive alone on an IDE cable or as master or CS with
something else as a slave. Wish I could remember more about
the situation.

An optical drive worked fine alone, set as master on my P35/JMicron.
(Pioneer DVR-110D - Asus P5K-E/WiFi-AP)

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

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