Which goes on a PCI Controller Card? A DVD-Rom Drive, or a Zip Drive?

[Cymbal Man Freq.]

I have 2 HDD's hooked up to a PCI card controller, and I have lost my HDD LED
lights because of it and I have to hit F-Lock & F1 to get to the boot menues
after the computer beeps twice (on a Dell Dimension 4300) when it can't find a
hard drive on the IDE #1 chain. I have my new DVD Burner hooked up on the end of
a cable and a Zip Drive hooked up in the middle of the cable to IDE #1. I also
have a DVD-Rom Drive hooked up to IDE #2.

I want to put the 2 HDD's back onto IDE #1 so the HDD LED's work when there is
hard drive activity. The DVD burner made the LED lights work when playing back a
DVD, and it seemed to change intensity by the volume of the sound being played.
So it seems IDE #1 is the only place to get the LED lights to work.

So should I have the DVD Burner and the Zip Drive hooked up to IDE #2 and the
DVD-Rom hooked up to the PCI Controller card, or should I have the to DVD Drives
hooked up to IDE # 2 and the Zip Drive hooked up to the PCI card? I prefer to
keep the Zip Drive plugged into something for storing files with long file
names.

 

[Guest]

Move the DVD drives to IDE#2 (One has to be jumpered to Master)Move your hard
drives to IDE#1 (unless they are a raid array, you didn't specify) again, one
must be jumpered to master) Move the Zip drive to the PCI contoller card.
Hard drive LED is set for IDE#1. Computer looks for 1st boot device on IDE#1.
You may be able to set your bios for a different 1st boot device if you do
have a raid array.

 

[Manny Borges]

Ok this going to sound like an odd question, but believe, me it is not.

What color are the connections on the PCI card and the motherboard.

I will be willing to bet that IDE 1 is Blue, IDE 2 is black and the PCI
controller is Blue.

I ask, because there are different speed connections, and both my DVD
writers prefer the faster connection.

--
Manny Borges
MCSE NT4-2003 (+ Security)
MCT, Certified Cheese Master

The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with.
-- Marty Feldman

 

[Yves Leclerc]

The color has no affect on the speed. You can place the 2 DVDs on to the
PCI IDE controller. Set both as "Master" and install a 80wire/40pin IDE
cable from PCI IDE 1 for the first DVD and another one from PCI IDE 2 for
the second. Then set the ZIP as Master on the motherboard IDE #2.

This way, each drive will be on its own any "should" be able to use all the
IDE speeds that each IDE port (IDE 1, IDE 2, PCI IDE 1 and PCI IDE 2) can
provide. When two drives are connected to the same cable, the IDE port
would always "slow-down" to the slower speed. Not only this but the IDE
port will have to constantly switch between reads/writes whenever you access
both drives at the same time (ex: copy huge file from drive C: to D.

 

[kurttrail]

The color has no affect on the speed.

Not necessarily true, because depending on how old and what make and
model of mobo, it can. IIRC, I had a mobo around 5 or 6 years ago that
had one color for 100MB RAID, and another for 66MB normal IDE.

On my present mobo, it is not a matter of speed but function. One color
is for RAID, the other is for normal IDE.

You can place the 2 DVDs on to
the PCI IDE controller.

Again, not necessarily true, depending on make and model of PCI IDE
controller. Some have problems when ATAPI devices are contected to PCI
IDE controller.

Set both as "Master" and install a
80wire/40pin IDE cable from PCI IDE 1 for the first DVD and another
one from PCI IDE 2 for the second. Then set the ZIP as Master on the
motherboard IDE #2.
This way, each drive will be on its own any "should" be able to use
all the IDE speeds that each IDE port (IDE 1, IDE 2, PCI IDE 1 and
PCI IDE 2) can provide. When two drives are connected to the same
cable, the IDE port would always "slow-down" to the slower speed. Not
only this but the IDE port will have to constantly switch between
reads/writes whenever you access both drives at the same time (ex:
copy huge file from drive C: to D.

Since the OP doesn't say what kind of PCI IDE controller he has, the
best advice is to RTFM.

--
Peace!
Kurt
Self-anointed Moderator
microscum.pubic.windowsexp.gonorrhea
http://microscum.com/mscommunity
"Trustworthy Computing" is only another example of an Oxymoron!
"Produkt-Aktivierung macht frei"

 

[Cymbal Man Freq.]

I hooked up the DVD-Rom drive to the PCI card and it played a DVD for about a
minute then the drive disappeared and my disc would not eject. I'm back to the
two HDD's on the PCI card and the DVD-Rom & Zip on IDE #1 with the DVD-RW on IDE
#2. The LED light for the HDD will not work with the HDDs, but then the person
who typically uses this computer (not me) missed seeing a big entire broken
window just 5 feet in front of her car earlier this week...so I don't think
she'll even miss the LED light. Every bootup now requires hitting the F-Lock &
F1 keys.

Optical drives don't get along with PCI cards, despite the literature from the
advertisements. (Promise ATA 100 card)

 

[ByTor]

I hooked up the DVD-Rom drive to the PCI card and it played a DVD for about a
minute then the drive disappeared and my disc would not eject. I'm back to the
two HDD's on the PCI card and the DVD-Rom & Zip on IDE #1 with the DVD-RW on IDE
#2. The LED light for the HDD will not work with the HDDs, but then the person
who typically uses this computer (not me) missed seeing a big entire broken
window just 5 feet in front of her car earlier this week...so I don't think
she'll even miss the LED light. Every bootup now requires hitting the F-Lock &
F1 keys.

Optical drives don't get along with PCI cards, despite the literature from the
advertisements. (Promise ATA 100 card)

I have 4 optical drives connected to a Sil0860 Siig PCI Controller Card
and all function perfectly.......2-DVD burners, 1-DVD Player, 1-CDR
Burner(I can burn 3 CD's at once and the machine will not flinch).
Promises are more reliable with HD's as I have experienced in the past
having 4-HD's connected to a UltraTX2 card.....I also use the TX2's on
my various other machines with HD's attached.........

Are you sure you are using the proper drivers for the promise card? By
default once I allowed XP's drivers to be installed to one of my
machines promise cards and noticed that XP reported a 3rd logical
partition as free space and it did not show.......I forced the actual
manuf drivers and it magically appeared........Go figure.

You may also want to check your ASPI driver installation & make sure
they are installed & reported as functioning correctly.

http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aa571/aspi.htm

Just my experience............

 

[Lil' Dave]

The HDD LED indicator is still there, you've not lost it. The ide card,
which you identified as a Promise Ultra100 in another reply, has two led
outputs. One for each connector. Simply move the led wire from the
motherboard to the proper connector and pay attention to the polarity. If
it don't work, turn the connector 180 degrees.
Dell's use an Award bios. In the user bios settings should be an option to
boot from scsi first. This will cause the PC to seek the drives on the
Promise card for booting first.

It has been my experiences with this particular ide card that its not
tolerable of using ATAPI devices onboard. Strictly HDs only.