Hi,

I trying to boot a suse 10 disc from a dell dimension 4700, used the very same disc in my own box works fine.

The optical drives are as follows:

-Master -GCR-8483B
-Slave -NEC DVD+/-RW ND-3450A

I have it set to boot from optical drives before harddisc.

If I put in a windows disc, it will begin the setup process.

Does this box, being that it is a dell, only support microsoft.img (ms boot images)

Or does it have something to do with it being atapi and supporting boot emulation.

If you could be quite elaborate on the problem as I do not fully understand the whole atapi thing, I just figured that ROM's made this side of the stone age would boot these discs.

Most likely explanation is that the cd drive on your dell is having problems reading that media. It's not uncommon, particularly with older drives, for a cd drive to be picky about what cd-r media it will read. Try reburning at a slow speed or using a different brand of cd-r or cd-rw.

Or could it be that both drives don't boot with dell's crappy bios? Their bios is unusually option plentiful for an OEM. I think maybe the top drive is secondary master and the bottom is secondary slave and that the top(MASTER)is only a cd burner with no dvd capabilities.

The other drive is an dvd reader for sure i don,t think it is a writer.

So should I switch drive positions (master and slave)and then try booting the dvd? I guess i could just download all the cd iso's too.