Some Real Big Problems (Building a PC from the Ground Up)

Happy_Demon

New Member
I purchased all of the parts and am positive that all things are compatible with each other, but I guess I may not be doing something right.

I guess first questions first: what should I do after plugging every cable into the slots they need to go?

I guess that the logical thing would be to turn it on and enter BIOS, and so thats what I did. I went into BIOS and tried to detect the HDD and CD-ROM. While in BIOS I was unable to detect either so I set the HDD up as Master w/ Cap. Limit jumpers, and left the CD-ROM as slave. I was then able to see the HDD at ~133 GB (or so, I cannot remember), but am unable to see the CD-ROM still. I have the HDD on the black master end of the PATA cable, with the CD-ROM on the slave part of the cable, and the motherboard end is plugged into IDE0.

I hoped to get the other ~177 GBs on the HDD and downloaded Maxtor's MaxBlast and PowerMax programs. I was able to start up the MaxBlast and get into it. It saw the drive and was able to tell me all sorts of things about it, but it was unable to set up the drive.

PowerMax will get seen and start to go, but it would just clear the screen and show "A/" for the floppy drive it is in.

When putting in my Windows XP CD into the CD-ROM drive (which is getting power, but still does not get detected by the BIOS) it will tell me that there is no CD-ROM attached to the motherboard.

I am wondering if I am doing this in a screwy order or forgeting to do something. I will be much obliged for any help. Hope to see posts real soon, and thanks ahead of time to anyone who can help.
 

Happy_Demon

New Member
No, the HDD is PATA (I believe thats the term), it has the ribbon cable that plugs into the IDE port on the motherboard.

Also, I took the HDD out and set the CD-ROM to master in terms of jumper settings and the cables, but with no HDD in the system. It locked up. Just incase that helps somehow. I am sure it did that though just because it had no hard drive.
 

Happy_Demon

New Member
The HDD is a:

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L300R0 300GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive

The CD-ROM is an:

NEC Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 4X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache IDE DVD Burner
 

SonnieP

Member
I should have figure it was IDE since you stated you had both on one cable.

Are you sure your cable is okay? I never knew there was a slave/master on a cable.

Anyway... have you tried two separate cables and used IDE0 and IDE1? Just a thought.

Is the HDD and CD Rom listed in the boot order of the bios?

Just trying to think of things that could be wrong... maybe someone will chime in who is more knowledgeable.
 

Lax

VIP Member
Could have a tear/rip somewhere in the cable, check it just to be sure, even a single ripped wire will cause a problem.
 
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