Richard,

You did not mention anything about jumpers in your troubleshooting.  I know
for a fact the if a drive is not jumpered for the correct configuration it
"can" cause  the computer not to boot.  What's confusing is that some drives
will say no jumper required for a master with no slave, but it may not work
that way.  Specifically, I recently had a problem with a WD Caviar drive
that said it needed one jumper for a master with slave, but no jumper was
"required" for just a master.  However, without the jumper it took over two
minutes to detect the drive on post.

Alternatively, I tried to start a machine the other day when I had the drive
jumpered as master only, and I had a second drive on the same IDE channel.
The fan would come on, but nothing else.  As soon as I corrected the jumper
problem the computer booted without trouble.

Just a thought in case you hadn't checked this.

Kyle Elmblade

From: "Richard T" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 28, 2000 8:50 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Can't get system to boot with IDE device!Helllp!


> Hi Listers.
>            Now, this is a strange situation which I've not encountered
> before, i'll try not to be too wordy with it.
>      The system is a Abit BX-6 with a P11 450, 256SDRAM Diamond Stealth
> Video, Soundblaster 128, IDE2=36Xcdrom, 2xMitsui(HiVal)cdr.IDE1= Maxtor
> 16meg H.D. zip100. 56kSoftware modem, win98 vers2
>  Here's what's going on:
>     Wishing to copy some files off of a laptop harddrive which I was
> planning on re-doing,I installed the adapter and I slaved that drive off
> of IDE 1, position 2, where the zip drive was. It worked just fine.I
> copied my files, turned off the machine and disconnected same and
> re-connected the zip.The Machine would not boot up...the Fans worked,
> but other than that, nothing at all! I then removed the cables from the
> zip and tried again.. it booted just fine. A little later, I decided to
> try to connect an extra Maxtor 6.5 H.D. that I had laying around, just
> to see if it would work. It didn't.. no boot at all, no nothing! once
> again I turned everything off and removed the drive and it booted. I
> proceeded to do my work, eventually, I just had to try to connect the
> zip one more time. Nothing worked again, except.. this time, when I
> tried to re-boot nothing at all happened, other than the fans running.
> It's still dark!
>     My gut is that there's a power supply issue here, but the power
> supply used is one which I put in only about 9 months ago. I do'nt have
> another one around to test it with, but before I go spinning my wheels,
> I thought i'd ask the smartest group of computer nuts in the
> world..Please, any thoughts or insight here??
> Thanks a million in advance!
> Richard Tabas
> Philly, Pa.

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