Andrew J. Rozsa wrote:
> I have 4 external (1394) enclosures with Maxtor drives in them (120GB). 
> My experience with external boxes has not been very good. Eventually 
> they all seem to fail. The drives seem to be OK, once I remove them and 
> put them inside a desktop box. Maybe I am buying cheap enclosures.

The usual culprit in external USB/Firewire enclosures that kill drives 
is heat.  They simply don't move enough air across the drive surface to 
cool it properly.  Especially under extended use.

Since your drives are working after removal from the enclosure, it could 
simply be dead power supplies or electronics that have gone dead.  (i.e. 
cheap build quality)  I've got some enclosures that are still ticking 
after a few years and others that died early.  Some I wish would die 
because they don't support drives larger then 137GB.

(We're currently testing out some newer USB/Firewire dual-interface 
cases with built-in PSUs and an internal fan for the HD.)

> The PC I am building is based on a 865PEDAP MoBo.
> 
> The ICH5 chipset supports:
>           - 2 parallel ULTRA ATA100 sockets
> - 2 serial ATA sockets

http://www.jetwaycomputer.com/spec/865pedap.html

> 
> I have 2 IDE hard-drives drives already connected to one of the IDE 
> sockets. A floppy and a DVD-ROM drive on the second. The Serial ATA 
> sockets on the Mobo are empty, but a RAID SATA PCI adaptor takes care of 
> the two small scuzzi drives. The IDE drives are jumpered for CS and I am 
> using a 80-wire cable.

Seeing a floppy drive on an IDE cable would be a new one in my book... 
(always possible).

Usually floppy drives use a slightly narrower ribbon cable (with 
cable-twists to flip pins around near the drive-end).  Looking at the 
motherboard, your standard floppy connector is over near the PSU 
connector (lower right).

> I don’t care if I have the SATA. They are an “inheritance” from the 
> Mobo’s server days.
> 
> During boot up I see:
> 
> Primary Master: WDC
> Primary Slave: None
> Secondary Master: None
> Secondary Slave: None
> 
> The system storage, after boot up, looks like this:
> 
> WDC WD1200BB-00CAA1 [Hard drive] (120.03 GB) -- drive 0
> WDC WD1000BB-00CAA0 [Hard drive] (100.03 GB) -- drive 1
> WDC WD40 0BB-75DEA0 SCSI Disk Device (40.00 GB) -- drive 2
> LaCie Group SA LaCie Hard Drive FireWire+ IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device [Hard 
> drive] (250.06 GB) -- drive 3
> USB 2.0 Flash Disk USB Device (1.00 GB) -- drive 4
> ST316002 1A USB Device [Hard drive] (160.04 GB) -- drive 5
> NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A [CD-ROM drive]
> 3.5" format removable media [Floppy drive]
> 
> 
> Local Drive Volumes (Drive Manager) are assigned thusly:
> 
> c: (NTFS on drive 0)           120.02 GB           115.09 GB free
> d: (FAT32 on drive 1)           100.00 GB 44.09 GB free
> e: (NTFS on drive 2)           40.00 GB     39.04 GB free
> f: (FAT32 on drive 5)           160.00 GB 29.08 GB free
> h: (FAT32 on drive 3)           250.00 GB 14.66 GB free
> 
> I remember something about 4 “devices” being the limit for IDEs, but 
> don’t remember whether it was 4 devices total, or up to 4 hard-drives. I 
> guess I could take out the floppy drive, put a hard-drive in its place 
> and use a USB or FireWire external floppy. But that still leaves me with 
> an extra drive.

IDE chipsets typically only allow (2) sockets with only (2) devices 
allowed per cable.  If there are additional chipsets on the motherboard 
(such as a Promise RAID chipset) then you might have a 3rd IDE port for 
an additional (2) drives.

Looking at the picture, you only have (2) IDE sockets (white/red) in the 
lower-left.  That limits you to a total of (4) IDE devices without using 
any add-in cards in the PCI slots.  (i.e. 3 HDs and the DVD)

> I really want at least two more of the IDE drives that used to be in 
> 1394 enclosures inside the desktop box, if I can. So much so, in fact, 
> that I am willing to build a second PC, if I have to and share one set 
> of I/O devices via a KVM switch. If I must.
> 
> 1. First, what in the world is happening during boot-up – how come the 
> BIOS doesn’t see any of the drives except the SATA (as one drive)?

Might be getting confused by the CS (cable select) setting on the 
drives?  (I never use CS, I always use MA/SL jumpers.)

> 2. Secondly, can one put 4 (four) IDE hard-drives AND the floppy & the 
> DVD-ROM drive (I got the space) on one Mobo? I would yank the SATA.

Not with this M/B.  There's always the option of a single-port or 
dual-port PCI add-in card that supports IDE.  Which would allow you to 
connect more IDE drives inside the case.

> 3, The two IDE sockets on the MoBo are colored red and white. The cable 
> used for the floppy and DVD-ROM ends in a red plug. Any significance to 
> this?

Colored end of the cable should attach to the motherboard (it's usually 
a blue connector, but red is possible).  And sometimes it doesn't matter 
(usually when there are only 2 connectors on the cable, one at each end).

> 4. Is there some type of conversion method (cable, adapter card) that 
> would allow me to install 2 IDE drives in the place of the SATA drives?

There are kits that allow you to attach IDE drives to SATA controllers. 
  And there are probably kits that allow you to go the other direction. 
  Note that these make the drive about 1.5" to 2.0" longer which can be 
a problem in some cases.

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