Dimension 4600 Mobo IDE Connector Trouble

Check to make sure you properly jumpered the new drive - if parallel ATA, it must be jumpered for cable select, NOT master or slave.

 

Yes, both HDD and CDRom are optioned for cable select.

Thanks 

You would normally have the cdrom and the master hard drive both on the black connector. you do this by having a seperate cable for each. Do you have a mini model that doesn't have 2 ide headers on it?

The motherboard has two IDE connectors. There are two cables. The cdrom is on the white connector (which was working previously). The hard drive is on the black connector. When the hard drive cable is on the black connector, the hard drive is recognized, but the cdrom is not. To isolate the trouble, I did the following:

 

a. Disconnected the cable from the hard drive, but left the controller end plugged into the black connector.

b. Then unplugged the cdrom cable and plugged the cable from the black connector to the cdrom. The cdrom now worked.

c. I then tried moving the controller end of the cable to the white connector. Now, the CDROM was not recognized.

 

This is why I'm assuming that there is a problem with the white connector. 

ong79407

It sounds like the motherboard's secondary IDE controller has failed, you could either replace the motherboard, or install a PCI IDE controller card for the optical drives.

Bev.

Ps. Good troubleshooting.


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Primary cable black connector to HD. Secondary cable black connector to cdrom. All blue connectors to motherboard, white connectors not used.

Set primary and secondary master set to auto in bios, slave  = none.

That should make everything work. If both your cables are not 80 pin, make sure you use the 80 pin for the HD. 

 

I should have mentioned that the white connector is on the motherboard, virtually right next to and parallel with the black connector. The primary cable has a blue connector which was initially plugged into the motherboard's black connector.

  

Initial  

mobo ---black> >blue----cable---------black> >hdd    [hdd recognized]

mobo ----wht> >black----cable--------black> >cdrom  [cdrom not recognized]

 

Trial 1 

mobo ---black> >blue----cable---------black> >cdrom  [cdrom now works]

 

Trial 2

mobo ---wht> >blue----cable----------black> > cdrom [cdrom unrecognized again]

 

So the 80 pin cable has the blue connector for the motherboard and the 40 pin cable has black connector so that is right. What about the bios settings?

Copied this from the Setup:

 

Intel Pentium 4 Processor: 2.66 GHz

Level 2 Cache: 512 KB Integrated

BIOS version: A12

 

System Time:  Current

System Date:  Current

Drive Configuation

  Diskette Drive A: 3.5 inch, 1.44 MB

  SATA Primary Drive:  Off

  SATA Secondary Drive:  Off

  Primary Master Drive:  CD-ROM Device

  Primary Slave Drive:  Off

  Secondary Master Drive:  Off

  Secondary Slave Drive:  Off

  IDE Drive UDMA:  Off

 

Boot Sequence:

  1. IDE CD-ROM Device

  2. Hard disk drive (not installed)

  3. Diskette Drive

 

Memory Configuration:

  Installed System Memory:  512 MB DDR SDRAM

  System Memory Speed:  333 MHz

  System Memory Channel Mode:  Dual

  AGP Aperture:  128MB

 

CPU Information:

  CPU Speed: Normal

  Bus Speed:  533 MHz

  Processor 0 ID: F29

     Clock Speed:  2.66 GHz

     L2 Cache Size: 512 KB

 

Integrated Devices (LegacySelect options)

  Sound: On

  Network Interface Controller: On

  Mouse Port:  On

  USB Emulation:  On

  USB Controller:  On

  Serial Port 1:  On

  Parallel Port

    Mode: PS/2

    I/O Address: 378h

  Diskette Interface: Auto

  Primary Video Controller: Auto

  Onboard Video Buffer: 1 MB

 

Power Management

  Suspend Mode: S3

  AC Power Recovery: Off

  Lower Power Mode:  Disabled

 

System Security

  Post Hotkeys:  F2 and F1

  PXE BIJ Default Policy:  Deny

 

Keyboard NumLock:  On

Report Keyboard Errors:  Report

Auto Power On:  Disabled

Fast Boot:  On

OS Install Mode:  Off

IDE Hard Drive Acoustic Mode:  Bypass

System Event Log:   

ong79407,

You need to plug the secondary IDE cable (the one that was originally plugged into the back of the CD-ROM) into the hard drive then see if the hard drive is recognized in the BIOS. Your troubleshooting already proved the primary IDE controller & cable are good. If the hard drive isn't recognized after you do as I've recommended then either the secondary IDE cable or the controller is bad. To find out which one you'll need to attach the primary IDE cable (which definitely works) to the hard drive again & plug it into the secondary IDE controller. If the hard drive still isn't recognized then the controller has failed.

I see the problem. The cdrom is on the primary controller. It needs to be on the secondary. The HD goes on the primary. You also need to set secondary master to auto and  UDMA to on

Bev,

 

Decided to mail order a PCI IDE controller card. Installed it last night. Worked right away. Only trick was loading the driver since the driver is on CD. My DSL connection is working so I downloaded the driver from the mfr's website. Everything worked fine after that.

 

 

ong79407

That's great, happy to hear that the problem is resolved and for the feedback.

Bev.


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Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.