DVD / CDRW drive master slave situation

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I'm finding that my DVD drive is very stuttery and basically useless - I'm
wondering if its been set up properly. The CD-ROM drive is master, but the
IDE cable goes into the DVD drive first (ie is closest to the motherboard
IDE controller). If the CD drive is master, is it going to the cd drive to
find the dvd drive to play the dvd first? Surely that's not efficient - but
then again, the cable is closer to the motherboard from the DVD drive...

So, I'm not clear on the way it works speed-wise. My graphics card
incidentally, is a Geforce MX440 and I have 512 ram with a 1800+xp athlon,
so my system should be able to play DVDs fine. Its the same with different
software.

Thanks for any clarification on the above problem.

 

[Todd H.]

I'm finding that my DVD drive is very stuttery and basically useless - I'm
wondering if its been set up properly. The CD-ROM drive is master, but the
IDE cable goes into the DVD drive first (ie is closest to the motherboard
IDE controller). If the CD drive is master, is it going to the cd drive to
find the dvd drive to play the dvd first? Surely that's not efficient - but
then again, the cable is closer to the motherboard from the DVD drive...

So, I'm not clear on the way it works speed-wise. My graphics card
incidentally, is a Geforce MX440 and I have 512 ram with a 1800+xp athlon,
so my system should be able to play DVDs fine. Its the same with different
software.

The cable order shouldn't matter provided master and slave are set
correctly.

What may be happening is that your DVD drive is dumbing down to the
IDE bus speed of your CD-ROM drive.

I'd suggest setting the DVD drive as master, and temporarily pulling
the CD-ROM drive off the IDE cable and see if the problem goes away.

If the problem does go away, your solution is likely to
either not use the CD-ROM drive anymore,
replace it with one that supports the same IDE bus speed as
your DVD drive,
or
purchase another IDE card to run the CD-ROM drive on an IDE
interface that is separate from both your hard disks and the
DVD drive.

Best Regards,

 

[kony]

I'm finding that my DVD drive is very stuttery and basically useless - I'm
wondering if its been set up properly. The CD-ROM drive is master, but the
IDE cable goes into the DVD drive first (ie is closest to the motherboard
IDE controller). If the CD drive is master, is it going to the cd drive to
find the dvd drive to play the dvd first? Surely that's not efficient - but
then again, the cable is closer to the motherboard from the DVD drive...

So, I'm not clear on the way it works speed-wise. My graphics card
incidentally, is a Geforce MX440 and I have 512 ram with a 1800+xp athlon,
so my system should be able to play DVDs fine. Its the same with different
software.

Thanks for any clarification on the above problem.

Windows?

Check Device Manager, enable DMA mode (if available) ... not having
DMA enabled is the most likely cause.

Possibly you have a buggy drive, one or the other, and it would help
to switch them, their master slave positions, but there is no issue
involved with finding the DVD drive to play a DVD as you wrote, it
would be fine where it is if everything else is working right. Indeed
your system is much faster than needed to play a DVD, takes about a
400MHz system and vidcard with MPEG acceleration or 200MHz faster CPU
to compensate for a video card shortcoming, which doesn't apply to
your video card at all... may not be the greatest for modern games but
a lot faster than needed for DVD.


Dave

 

[Shep©]

I'm finding that my DVD drive is very stuttery and basically useless - I'm
wondering if its been set up properly. The CD-ROM drive is master, but the
IDE cable goes into the DVD drive first (ie is closest to the motherboard
IDE controller). If the CD drive is master, is it going to the cd drive to
find the dvd drive to play the dvd first? Surely that's not efficient - but
then again, the cable is closer to the motherboard from the DVD drive...

So, I'm not clear on the way it works speed-wise. My graphics card
incidentally, is a Geforce MX440 and I have 512 ram with a 1800+xp athlon,
so my system should be able to play DVDs fine. Its the same with different
software.

Thanks for any clarification on the above problem.

Try here,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/hard.html
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/cdsetup.html
and for win9X/ME,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/mode.html
and,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/diag.html
HTH



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
email shepATpartyheld.de
Free songs download,
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm

 

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http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/cdsetup.html

Thanks for the links. As I have 2 HDs and 2 ROMS, I hadn't considered doing
a HD1 master - CD slave / HD2 master - DVD slave combo on my 2 IDE channels.
This might be the best solution for me since the DVD and 2nd HD don't get
accessed as much as the primary HD, especially since I wouldn't be accessing
the 2nd HD ever, if I was accessing the DVD on the same channel. That's
given me a new slant on using my system efficiently - I might give that a
try, as well as some of the other posters suggestions when I get the time of
course!

: )

Thanks all.