At 10:00 PM 2/9/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Hey folks,
>
>I am working with a fairly modern system.
>
>It's a P3-800 with 256MB RAM running Win98. It has a PCI Network card, a
>PCI SCSI Adapter (which attaches to a SCSI 4x CD-RW, a CDROM drive, an ISA
>card that adapts an PCMCIA card ...
>
>I am installing a new AOpen CDRW drive. Initially I had planned to replace
>the current CDRom. It was set as slave on IDE0. But the BIOS didn't detect
>the CDRW. I tried various configurations including ATA-limiting jumpers,
>installing the CDRW as the ONLY device (master on IDE0), and a couple of
>other things. (I didn't have a second IDE cable at the time, so I didn't
>try installing it as master on IDE1.)
>
>After further investigation, I found that the current CD-ROM is _also_ not
>detected in the BIOS. Rather the person who put this computer together
>installed PowerIDE! which detects the CDRom later in the boot process.
>Just to try it, I simply installed my CDRW in the same spot as the CDRom
>to see if PowerIDE! would detect it. It did not.

Mike,

The existing SCSI CD-RW won't be detected by the system's BIOS. That BIOS
only knows how to detect IDE drives. Depending on what type of SCSI
controller you have, a true controller with onboard BIOS should detect the
CD-RW drive on the SCSI bis, however the cheap SCSI adapters do not have
BIOS and rely on a driver loaded by the OS.

As to why the BIOS does not detect the new IDE CD-RW is unknown. Is the
type set to "Auto" in the CMOS settings for that IDE position? Is the
onboard IDE controller activated? Is the cable good? Is the drive good? If
you have another system you can try them on to verify whether these
components are good.

Russ Poffenberger
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