2 replies to this topic

[vonteego3]

My brother in law gave me his old computer last week, which he hasn't used in about a year because he said the hard drive died and he didn't feel like replacing it/reloading windows/etc. So i brought it home, bought a new hard drive, hooked it up, and it wasn't recognized by the computer... I messed around with it for awhile, and determined that the IDE input on the motherboard (I realize that's probably not the proper term) that the hard drive was attached to wasn't working... I plugged the primary from the IDE cable attached to the 2 CD drives into the hard drive, and the secondary into one of the CD drives (since I needed it to load the OS) and it's now functioning (Windows is installing right now).

My question is this... is there a way to fix that input so that I can plug in all 3 devices, or am I going to have to go without the second CD drive unless I replace the motherboard?

[zsta2k6]

chances are you cannot fix the input... I'd check the bios to see if the primary channel happens to be disabled... other than that you're boned. If you really want the other CD drive, you could try getting a pci to ide card, which would get you 2 more IDE channels to work with. I recommend the Ultra133TX2 if you want to go that route, you can pick it up on the cheap at places like newegg or tigerdirect.

[Yoda]

Yea the port is probably fuxored, but zsta's idea might work.