I got my barebone system from MWAVE this week. I would like to put Mandrake 8.2 on it. My qustion is how to connect hard drive, DVD and CD-RW to the motherboard (GIGABYTE 7DXR).

I would like to use ribbon cable connect hard drive to primary controller, leave one connector spare. Use another ribbon cable to connect CD-RW and DVD to secondary controller, set CD-RW to master, and DVD to slave. Is this a right approach?

I got a audio cable from CD-RW package. I know where the audio cable goes to CD-RW drive. But I DON not know where the audio cabe goes to the motherboard (GIGABYTE 7DXR).

If the box of a piece of new hardware (like ATI All-In_WWONDER 128 PRO video card) says it supports windows 2000. Does it means it comes with the drivers for windows 2000, or I have to download them from the website?

Thanks in advance.

yeah, that layouts fine, as for the sound cable, well it'll be on there somewhere, assuming you've got integrated sound on the board. just search around a bit, and it should be listed in the manual, not that gigabyte can write a half decent manual if their lives depended on it

Yea put the hard drive on primary ide controller as master, and the cdrom/dvd drives just like you said. should work fine.

The cable from the cdrom drive should hook up to a connector either on your mobo if your using an onboard sound card, or to your sound card if your using a PCI/ISA card.

If Your video card came with a cd check the cd for drivers, you can always download newer drivers if needed, Linux should come with drivers for that card.

Thanks everyone for the replies.

hanzerik, I got a sound card on the board. what is mobo you mentioned?

mobo = motherboard