Kevin,

I just installed a new 40 gig Maxtor with an older  4 gig Quantum in a
system this week at work. I too, was confused by the jumper diagram on the
drives. I went to the Maxtor website also for the jumper settings, and your
description of them is correct. The website said it's mandatory that you use
cable select with ATA100 drives or they won't work. I had never heard of
this but that's what I did and they're both working fine. The problem I had
was I tried to use a standard 40 pin IDE cable, but the BIOS wouldn't detect
the Maxtor, no matter how I had the jumpers set. The website also says you
have to use an 80 pin ATA100 ribbon cable and I found this to be true.

BTW, I have the A7V mobo at home and it's an excellent, rock solid board.
But I had trouble setting up the right drive to be the bootable drive.
Depending on how you have the boot sequence set up in the BIOS, you can boot
off of the IDE or the ATA bus. For example, if you have a drive on the IDE
and one on the ATA, if you set up the BIOS to boot off
the ATA bus before the IDE hard drive, it will make the drive on the ATA bus
the C drive, and vice versa.

Hope this helps.

Dennis Thiel

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Neal" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2002 12:45 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Maxtor/Quantum jumper settings.


I'm confused, and could use some advice please. Actually, I have two
questions, but first things first.

One problem is that I've just started mounting the drives on a new
system based on an
Asus A7V mobo. The floppy was a no brainer, but I also have a Maxtor 40
Gb x7200, and a Quantum 20 Gb x 7200.
My intention was to mount both, but only fire up the Maxtor on the
primary IDE to make sure the basic bits and pieces worked, and later
move both to the ATA bus.

Now, trying to pre-set the jumpers  to IDE master/slave is where my
problem began.
The diagrams on both drives are almost identical, but don't look like
the pins on the back of the drives !
I went to the old Quantum website (which is now Maxtor) and found a
diagram which looks much more likely. Looking at the back of the drive,
it seems that the first (left) set of pins is Master, next is Cable
Select, third is Slave, fourth (right) is some sort of spare.

Has anybody else had any experience of this puzzle ?
These drives are almost exactly similar physically, - the different name
on the same decal is the biggest difference !
I did consider using Cable Select (ATA) - but of course, still need to
know which jumper to use, and also, I still need to prove that the basic
system will boot, - before my enthusiasm exceeds my intelligence !

The other question, - is that I have a mass of spinning machinery
crammed into the 3 inch bays, - surely at least one would be better
moved onto rails in a spare 5 inch bay ?
Seems to me that a bit more airspace all round would be no bad thing, -
or is it really a problem in these days of micro engineering ?  I have
assembled the system with airflow as a primary consideration, -
currently with a Duron 800 but intending to double that eventually..

Kevin,
New Zealand.

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