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CDRW Drive on a Dimension D266
The original CD drive on my D266 recently failed. I had installed a 48X CDRW drive as a slave along with the original on the secondary IDE drive and it worked fine. When I wanted to make the slave CDRW as the stand alone master, I have been unable to get Windows to recognize the CDRW. My CDRW is attached to the secondary IDE cable and I have Windows 98SE. I also have the last BIOS upgrade from Dell. I downloaded the drivers from the vendor (Khypermedia).
To date, I have tried:
1) Erasing and reinstalling the IDE controllers to "dual"
2) Tried all three combinations of master slave and cable select.
3) Tried botting with the audio connection to the sound card attached and detached.
4) Set BIOS to auto.
Power works. CDRW works. It just cannot be recognized.
Strangely enough, although my Windows IDE controller recognizes a primary and secondary controller, my BIOS does not recognize the secondary BIOs.
One last comment, when this CDRW was a slave,it worked fine. My original plan was to substitute a 52x CDRW in the master slot, but after reading the fine print on the box that indicated I needed a processor speed of 300 decided just to make the slave CDRW the primary. ( I did experiment with the new 52x CDRW as the master. In this configuration, both CDRWs worked once without sound. When I tried connecting my audio to the slave instead nothing worked so that is when I decided to go with the "simple " solution of moiving the slave drive to primary).
I am beginning to wonder if I somehow did something to my IDE cable or motherboard?
Predator
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August 11th, 2004 19:00
Hi Maroon,
The drivers are generic to your OS, Windows 98SE, you did not instal the Real Mode / DOS drivers did you?
Click on the CD/RW link in my post and scroll to Section 6-1, article 1.
If the above article is not relevant, I would suggest you start clean, I am not talking about your OS, Open the case and disconnect your Optical drives, both should be on the Secondary IDE channel, the power cables as well.
Re-boot the system and then Clear the NVRAM, Section 11, article 2, same CD/RW site. Shutdown and install one optical drive at a time, starting with the drive in the Top Bay, set to MA (Master) or CS (Cable Select). If this drive is recognized then attache the second drive to the middle connection SL (Slave) or CS (Cable Select). Exam the IDE cable, also the pins, make sure none are bent.
Best Regards
God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the
difference.
CD/RW Link
maroon51
3 Posts
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August 13th, 2004 14:00
Thanks for the the tips. I tried clearing the NVRAM-but that had no impact- Windows still doesn't recognize the drive. I noticed in my BIOS that the the CD ROM is recognized as a third boot option for what ever that is worth. \
As to the first option that you suggested, I have a OEM Soundbalste AWE 64 ISA card. Do you happen to know if there is a CDROM controller on it? I didn't find any information on the web regarding this.
Is it possible that a 48X24X48 is too fast for a D266? I know this is a long shot. Also, would the lack of proper drivers actually cause windows not to recognize a device connected to a secondary IDE cable?
I also examined the pins on the IDE cable. They all looked okay. Is it possible to burn out an IDE cable? I am beginning to wonder if I should buy a new one. ..
Thanks for any other suggestions that you might have.
maroon51
3 Posts
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August 17th, 2004 16:00