Optical Drive: IDE Secondary Master vs Slave
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Posted by Bob on September 7, 2005, 3:07 pm
Please log in for more thread options NEC 3540 optical drive. I put the optical drive as IDE Secondary Slave, mainly because it would only fit in the bottom bay because of the mainboard getting in the way - so I cabled it as Secondary Slave for convenience. Most of the time the only HD is the Primary Master. Sometimes the optical drive is not be recognized by the BIOS, especially when I inserted a CD during the POST operation (I set the BIOS to give a full POST). I jumpered it as Slave to make sure the BIOS would see it. But that did not help. The Secondary Master is unpopulated. Now I have it in the Secondary Master position and it appears that it is always recognized no matter what I do. In the past optical drives were fussy and needed to be the Secondary Master or they would not work at all. It would appear that the new drives do work if you don't do anything to them but they are still somewhat fussy. Is it still a hard and fast rule to make the optical drive the Secondary Master? | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Grinder on September 7, 2005, 3:30 pm
Please log in for more thread options It is my, perhaps uninformed, opinion that for a given controller, you should not have a slaved device, without a master. Some hard drives have a special "single" jumper setting, but every optical drive I've seen would be jumpered as a master. (Or possibly cable select if you have "selecting" cables. In that case, you should attach the single optical drive to the master plug.) | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Timothy Daniels on September 7, 2005, 11:03 am
Please log in for more thread options "Grinder" wrote:
> It is my, perhaps uninformed, opinion that for a given controller,
> you should not have a slaved device, without a master.... That may be controller-specific, but in my PC, a Dell Dimension with and a motherboard controller and a SIIG PCI card controller, the machine can boot from a lone HD jumpered as Slave. I do this routinely each time I complete the cloning of the primary HD as a backup and then subsequently boot the clone for the first time with the "parent" OS invisible to it. There is really no role difference between Master and Slave - they are just flags to the controller so the controller can tell the two devices apart when they're on the same channel (i.e. same cable). If the two settings had been named Maude and Shirley, a generation of newbies would have avoided confusion about the significance of those settings. The only other significance of Master/Slave is attributed by some BIOSes, maybe *most* BIOSes, by defaulting their HD boot order to [ch.0 Master], [ch. 0 Slave], [ch. 1 Master], [ch. 1 Slave], in that order. Of course, this boot order (sometimes called "boot sequence") lasts only until manually reset by the user via keyboard commands to the BIOS. What may have led to the "no Slave without a Master" superstition is the rule to avoid signal reflections within the cable - "no device at the intermediary connector without a device at the end connector". Since an unoccupied end connector presents an unterminated line (i.e. infinite impedance) which causes signal reflections, the length of cable between the two connectors can present just enough reflected signal delaty to confuse the device at the inter- mediate connector. (The specification that this length of cable be between 5- and 6-inches long is probably an attempt to minimize this effect.) The rule therefore specifies that a lone device be put at the end connector - where it would, if Cable Select is used, take on the Master setting. Otherwise, the device at the end connector could be jumpered as Slave with no bad results. As for the necessity of an optical device to be set as Master, I can't imagine why that should be. If it's controlled by an IDE controller, IDE specs apply, and I'm unaware of anything in those specs which are specific to optical devices. *TimDaniels* | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Bob on September 7, 2005, 6:37 pm
Please log in for more thread options On Wed, 7 Sep 2005 11:03:05 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
> As for the necessity of an optical device to be set as Master, I can't
> imagine why that should be. If it's controlled by an IDE controller, > IDE specs apply, and I'm unaware of anything in those specs which > are specific to optical devices. I once had a Mitsui CD-RW and I could not get it to work as slave no matter what I tried. I wrote tech support and they replied that the unit MUST be a master. The drive was crap to begin with but I did manage to get it to work as master. But then I could not use anything as slave on that channel. When I asked tech support, they replied that not only must the unit be a master, it must be the only unit on the channel. The optics were loose inside and rattled when shaken gently. It also made weird whistling sounds when it first powered up, like it was making a pass at you. Just what I needed - a gay CD drive. I was so happy when I finally got rid of that piece of shit that I celebrated by taking an large hammer to it. | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Alceryes on September 7, 2005, 3:44 pm
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> When I built this computer I put in 3 removable hard drive bays and 1
> NEC 3540 optical drive. > > I put the optical drive as IDE Secondary Slave, mainly because it > would only fit in the bottom bay because of the mainboard getting in > the way - so I cabled it as Secondary Slave for convenience. > > Most of the time the only HD is the Primary Master. Sometimes the > optical drive is not be recognized by the BIOS, especially when I > inserted a CD during the POST operation (I set the BIOS to give a full > POST). > > I jumpered it as Slave to make sure the BIOS would see it. But that > did not help. The Secondary Master is unpopulated. > > Now I have it in the Secondary Master position and it appears that it > is always recognized no matter what I do. > > In the past optical drives were fussy and needed to be the Secondary > Master or they would not work at all. It would appear that the new > drives do work if you don't do anything to them but they are still > somewhat fussy. > > Is it still a hard and fast rule to make the optical drive the > Secondary Master? > > The cable select setting would be your best option here. Be sure you jumper your Optical AND any HD you put in the bay as cable select. Also, some Bios' are flaky when it comes to removable HD's when something else is chained as slave (or as CS but connected to the middle of the IDE cable) so see if you can configure it (might need to pick up a longer IDE cable) so that the Optical is at the end of the cable and the removable HD bay is on the middle connector and both devices are set to cable select, then you shouldn't have any problems. -- "I don't cheat to survive. I cheat to LIVE!!" - Alceryes | ||||||||||||||||
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> NEC 3540 optical drive.
>
> I put the optical drive as IDE Secondary Slave, mainly because it
> would only fit in the bottom bay because of the mainboard getting in
> the way - so I cabled it as Secondary Slave for convenience.
>
> Most of the time the only HD is the Primary Master. Sometimes the
> optical drive is not be recognized by the BIOS, especially when I
> inserted a CD during the POST operation (I set the BIOS to give a full
> POST).
>
> I jumpered it as Slave to make sure the BIOS would see it. But that
> did not help. The Secondary Master is unpopulated.
>
> Now I have it in the Secondary Master position and it appears that it
> is always recognized no matter what I do.
>
> In the past optical drives were fussy and needed to be the Secondary
> Master or they would not work at all. It would appear that the new
> drives do work if you don't do anything to them but they are still
> somewhat fussy.
>
> Is it still a hard and fast rule to make the optical drive the
> Secondary Master?