A question of JUMPERS

[Vanguarde]

Umm Hi! It's me again, the Vanguarde.

......

Ok, I am confused about something now that we have the power cables all ready to go.
I thought you just plug in your hard drive, CD rom, etc but it seems I need to set some jumpers for master and slave? The last thing I thought I needed to do was set some kinky sounding jumpers , I figured they set themselves. =/

Now I am not just coming here asking everyone else to do the work, I did some homework on it and I am just coming here to see if I am right, or if someone senses danger or something you know?
Ok, here we go.

I want to use a CD-Rom Drive.
I want to use a IDE hard drive, non-raid.
I want to use a floppy drive.

1: The floppy drive does not use the IDE thingy, it has it's own plug, and does not need jumper settings. Just be careful to put the power plug in right since floppy drives are mostly never 'notched' . Does this sound correct??

2: I should make the ATA 100 Hard drive the Primary Master, on it's own 80 pin cable to IDE channel 1 on the motherboard.

3: I should make the CD-Rom Secondary master, on it's own IDE channel, with a 80 pin cable, plugging into IDE port 2 of the motherboard.

Does my understanding of the way it goes correct as stated above?

I also saw other options, like Making the Hard drive the primary master, and the CD rom the slave, but that sounded more like if you have more than one hard drive. I also saw 'cable select', but the documentation I have says for best proformance to set the jumpers manually.

Am i on the right track, or am I totally lost?

Please some advice and help would be great!

- Mike

[cstierhoff]

This sounds good to me.
Put HD as Pri Master.
Put Cd as Sec Master.
Also on the floppy - Pin 1 on the ribbon cable( marked with a red stripe) is usually next to the power connector. If you should get the ribbon cable on backwards, some of the problems that result are 1. Floppy does not work 2. Floppy LED stays on constantly.

Glad that Asus finally came thru with an answer for you so you could proceed.

And remember, the only dumb question is the one you don't ask.

cstierhoff

[thekingofpain]

Yer there---itl work either way---
check yer PM ill give you a phonecall and press the powerbutton for ya---

[bigblue77]

You are on the right track. For best performance you should set the jumpers on both to Master. But Cable select will also work.

Jer

[Vanguarde]

When you say set both to master you mean set one to Primary Master, and one to Secondary master correct?

[bigblue77]

Correct.

Jer

[Etruscan]

Here's a kinky bit for you. The CD-Rom as the secondary master on the secondary IDE channel only needs a regular 40 wire IDE cable, if it's not going to be working at speeds over 33 ATA. Just the HD on the primary needs the expensive 80 wire 40 pin IDE cable in order to operate at speeds over 33 ATA.

[Vanguarde]

I was under the impression that I should use 80 pin wire for everything to get the max power from my computer - and that the extra 40 pins are for grounding only

It might help to know that I am one of the hardest of the hardcore gamers and I demand frame rate - if a cable means the difference between losing only ONE Frame per second, and it costs more, I will buy the cable. lol

FPS is life

- M


I think I have the jumper thing down now ! Let me go do it...

[thekingofpain]

press the button
press the button
press the button
press the button
press the button

The parts you have wont allow you to hurt them!

press the button
press the button
press the button
press the button

[Xeroid]

Originally posted by Vanguarde
I was under the impression that I should use 80 pin wire for everything to get the max power from my computer - and that the extra 40 pins are for grounding only

That is true for a hard drive but a CDrom, Zip Disk, CD Burner doesn't need the 80 pin cable because they don't run over udma33. Hard disks that run udma66 and up require the 80 pin cable. It won't hurt anything to install say a CDrom with the 80 pin cable but it isn't needed. Just costs more money for the cable.

Mike

[bigblue77]

LOL tkop.

Jer

[caddmannq]

It's not really extra grounding, Vanguarde. The extra forty wires in the cable are grounded, but they're there just to prevent cross-talk between the other 40 wires wich will occur at UDMA100 speeds and above. At such high frequencies, the straight wires act just like a transformer, inducing current from one wire to the next without a physical connection.

The jumpers on the drives are only for master, slave, or CS. The drives don't care what channel they're on, except that the boot drive must always be the primary master.

Theoretically, the CDROM could be secondary master, or primary slave in your case. I'd prefer it as secondary master. But that doesn't always work, depending on the exact HDD & CDROM you're using. I've seen pairs that would work fine one way, but not the other.

Just check the BIOS on first boot to setup what's on what channel.

[originel]

also, some (older) UDMA drives will only run at full speed a) if they are the only other drive on the channel or b) any other drives (including cd-roms!) are at least the same DMA. so because of this i'd recommend the cdrom on secondary master.

[LiLRiceBoi]

Since you say you only have a HDD and a CD-Rom, put the hdd on primary master and the cd-rom on secondary master. Each IDE channel can only "talk" to one device at a time, so if you have it set up like this, you can transfer data from cd-rom to hdd more quickly.

[Underclocked]

Factory default setting on most hard drives is for stand-alone setup. You should need do nothing to it's jumpers if you are installing it as the only drive on the primary cable. The cdrom could be set master or slave, no big difference if it's the only drive on the secondary. And using the 80 wire drive cable certainly won't hurt anything.