Is either of these a supported configuration?

I have a BOOT drive running WinME.
It is the master on the primary port.
If I unplug that data cable from the mother board
socket and leave the BIOS for that "port" set to
AUTO (in an Award 4.51 BIOS), AND have
a hard drive all setup with a primary partition set
as active properly jumpered on the second port,
"should" I let the computer boot from that port?
(The BIOS would see it as the first active primary
partition, and it is fully bootable and works.)
Is this stretching the rules, or is it "OK"?

Skip the following if it is too "way out"...
Carrying it one step further, (this was an afterthought...),
it would almost seem you could put the CD-ROM drive(s)
in their place (on the primary port) and still not get into trouble...
The second part is nutty, I know, but seems like a logical
extension of the first...

I understand DOS/BIOS letter assignment rules, and started
wondering why we "always" put the CDs on the secondary
port, (when there is a choice of only two ports)...

I am wondering if this is just a "hold-over" of when there
were NO CDs and the hard drive was ALWAYS on the
first port, (since at one time there was only one port anyway...)
I do not go back far enough with home PCs to know when
there were NO hard drives or ANY ports...

Any comments?         Rick Glazier

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