How to 2-3 optical drives

[Sridhar_Rao]

Don't ask me why, but I have three optical drives besides a hard disk and I want to use them all in my desktop. The recent among them is LG DVD writer (which came with a 80-pin connector cable). The motherboard has only two ports, primary IDE port and the secondary IDE port. While the primary IDE port is connected to the hard disk, the secondary is connected to the two optical drives. Both the IDE cables can connect to only two devices. Since the IDE data cable arising from secondary IDE port is already connected to two opticals, it has reached its limit. The IDE data cable arising from primary IDE port is connected to the hard disk but another connection is free. Can I use this to connect to the third optical drive that I have? Please look at the diagram for a clear picture. I have not figured out the right way for the jumper to be inserted on each of these devices, please let me know from the diagram which of these should be master/slave or what is the best way to use these three optical drives+hard disk and how to use 40-pin/80-pin connector cables along with respective jumper settings.*www.microrao.com/ide.gif

 

[debsuvra]

You have to just connect the Combo to the free IDE slot.

Set the jumpers to "Cable Select" setting and it will automatically select the HDD as primary master & Combo drive as secondary.

 

[Sridhar_Rao]

You mean, to the free slot to which the HDD is connected? I tried this but system refused to boot "invalid disk" or some error. Ok, I now will keep the jumper at CS and try again, by the way how should the jumper be placed for hard disk (I never looked into that before).

 

[debsuvra]

use cable select foe both HDD and Combo!

 

[The_Devil_Himself]

offtopic:can't you live with one drive less in your system!!!.even one dvd writer is more than enough.sell off other buggers.

 

[Sridhar_Rao]

Yes, it looks absurd to have so many optical drives in one system, but they happened to come one after the other. Since some among you is "eager" to know why these many, here is the story. When I bought my system, I had only Combo drive which worked pretty for a year. Slowly the CD writing ability of the combo drive failed while DVD cum reading abililty were retained. In those years I never thought I would ever have to write a DVD and when the combo drive could not be repaired I bought myself a CD writer. I could read DVDs on combo writer and write CDs on CD writer, it was wonderful. Then I bought a Dell laptop which could write even dual layered DVD, but as the warranty was about to expire the optical drive failed, first it failed to write CDs, then it failed to write DVDs. By then I had got used to burning DVDs and now I felt I am missing DVD writer. Since no help came from Dell and I needed a DVD writer urgently, I bought a DVD writer. But, the original combo drive still reads DVD, the CD writer works well so why should I discard them just because I have a new DVD writer? I did not want to offend their loyalty so I decided to retain all of them and use them. I would hereonwards use combo drive to read DVD, use CD writers for burning CD and the new DVD writer to burn DVDs only. Selling off the old ones would fetch me nothing, but by dividing the labour among the three drives, I would probably extend their lives too. Hope I am now clear (if not convincing).
Thank you guys for the help. I did the following: I used the 80-pin connector for the new DVD writer and the old CD writer on the secondary IDE port. I set the hard disk as master and combo drive as slave and connected them to the primary IDE port.
Thanks for support.

 

[bikdel]

great illustration sam9s