Not to sound like TOO much of a newbie, but can a hard drive and a CD drive share the same IDE cable with the proper Master/slave settings? If so, what are the proper settings and what jumper pin configuration does Dell use. I'm hoping the readers of this questions will be believers in the "there's no such thing as a stupid question" axiom.

Yes you can connect a harddrive and a cd-rom on the same IDE cable. Just set one master and one slave. As for on which pin to place the jumper.. That'll be on the sticker that's usually on the harddisk and cdrom..

I'm no hardware expert but I don't see why it would be a problem. There are usually instructions on the hardware for correct jumper settings.

FYI

/dev/hda = Primary Master
/dev/hdb = Primary Slave
/dev/hdc = Secondary Master
/dev/hdd = Secondary Slave

Use this info to get your devices working correctly.

regards,
...drkstr

**edit**
puntjuh beat me to it
**edit**

**Edit**
Wow, I feel stupid :-(

Actually, your reading the pinout labals incorrectly. You don't read it as CSM, SLA it's read vertically:

C S M
S L A
* * *
* * *

Try reading it vertically. First row is "Cable Select" Second row is "Slave" Third row is "Master"

KC

yeah, I was really, really hoping no one would read my post before I erased it, but just my luck... Anyway, thanks for the help. Even though my face is bright red, I got everything working.

No reason for the red face. Ive done worse...

Unless of course your using Windows, Then you should be embarassed...

KC

Maybe you will feel better if I display my ignorance

Does this mean there is no real difference between the 2 cables? For example, if the cables for the hard drives and the cd/dvd drives were switched an OS would install as normal. And the hard drives would now be hdc and hdd?

I'll probably regret asking this. The coffee hasn't quite kicked in.

AS far as running windows, guilty as charged.

yes, there is no difference between the two cables. ide cables are interchangable, they are passive components (i.e. the cables dont actually do anything, they are literally just peices of wire stuck together). you can get two different types of ide cable, 40's and 80's, the difference is in the number of wires in them, but dont worry too much about that, they are interchangable too, you can use whatever you have to hand.

you can swap cables at will, and it wont change drive assignments, thats handled on the motherboad and the drives. drkstr had it right with his list. most mobo's have their ide plugs labelled IDE0 and IDE1 (some label them IDE1 and IDE2), the IDE0 is the primary ide chain, then IDE1 is the secondary ide chain. it doesnt matter what cable you use, if you have a hard drive set to Master and plugged into IDE0, it will always be the primary master and appear in /dev/hda, and so on. in general, cables have no effect on the assignment of drives or devices, they are just there to connect two things together.

to put these on drkstr's list looks like:

/dev/hda = Primary Master (IDE0 Master)
/dev/hdb = Primary Slave (IDE0 Slave)
/dev/hdc = Secondary Master (IDE1 Master)
/dev/hdd = Secondary Slave (IDE1 Slave)


and there's no need for a red face, the only stupid question is the one that is unasked

We appear to have some IDE cabling experts in this thread. Would someone correct or confirm my understandings on this IDE stuff? (p.s. - this isn't a thread hijack - I think the answers are relevant to the OP's original question )

Questions:

(1) Cable Select will only work on 80 wire cables. With a 40 wire cable you will have to select your own Master and Slave manually. True or False? (I think True)

(2) Mixing devices of different speeds (e.g., a harddisk and a CD-ROM) on the same cable will slow the faster device down. (Again, I think True - but I'm probably wrong.)

I've avoided the need for an answer on my personal systems by using 80 wire cables with CS and manually setting M/S with 40 wire, and only putting similar devices on the same IDE cable. I'm now wondering if this is really necessary.

Thanks

If you Google on cable select, you'll find a couple of sites which explain what cable select actually is, and how to quite simply modify a 40 cable to make it work (80 cables aren't univerally available, apparently.) Interesting stuff.

LOL

I second that! genthree - that's what the forums are for, everyone has to learn something for the first time