Won't pick up IDE drives

[MikeH]

Can anyone please advise.
I upgraded my PC with new M/B and PSU, and put the old M/B and PSU into a spare case that already had a DVD Rom, CD RW and floppy drive. I also installed a recently formatted 120Gb hard drive. This PC is for my wife purely for emails and Word. The problem is, when I boot up the PC, it searches for a Master drive, then says "None", and similarily says the same about the other drives. I am then told it was a boot failure and to insert system disk and hit return. But none of the drives will open for me to insert anything. The floppy drive appears to have been found and the light initially flashes.
If M/B has failed, how? I only transferred from one case to another, with the PSU, and was working perfectly.
Any advice would be welcome,
Mike

 

[Silverhazesurfer]

did you use the same cables?

I assume you noted the red stripe on the ribbon cable, is it on pin one? Most connectors only go on one way, but some don't. there is a notch on the ribbon cable plug that allows it only one way.

Have you ensured that you connected the same drives to the locations where they once were? Jumpers on an IDE drive indicate master, slave, or cable select. If you are confused as to how they were connected, check the jumpers on the drive. Typically, there is a drawing on the drive that indicates the jumper position for each setting. A master drive would be the first drive on either connector.

Try only booting with the primary drive. What happens there?

Absolute worst case scenario, you static shocked the BIOS or some other chip on the board causing it to fail. Or you could have a ground fault issue in the case that you put it in. Although, this is less likely.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Aye, optical drive and hard drive jumpers.

Put the two optical drives on one IDE port after configuring one as slave and one as master and put the solitary hard drive into the other IDE port having configured it as master.

And has already been pointed out check cable orientation though most connections have a notch so you can only connect cables one way.

And this may sound daft but you have connected all the power connectors I assume?

 

[MikeH]

Thanks for reply.
I'm using the same cables, and just took the cable off the 2 optical drives to motherboard again for what seems like the umteenth time, and replaced it, and this time it worked. Thinking the cable is faulty, I replaced it with one out of my upgraded PC and it didn't work. So I replaced the original cable and it is still working. The other cable works perfectly in my upgraded PC. Who knows what's going on in these flippin' machines!!!!
Thank you for your advice, it was much appreciated.
Mike

 

[Silverhazesurfer]

ah, i see what you did there. Does one ribbon cable have smaller conductors than the other? (the ribs on the cable)

Chances are, the new cables are not compatible with the old drives. It's a data structure and speed thing.

 

[MikeH]

The one from my upgraded PC has, yes.

 

[Silverhazesurfer]

that's the problem. incompatible cabling.

 

[MikeH]

Thanks for your help. Sometimes it's the simplest things and you don't realise.
Mike