On 12 Apr 99, at 11:38, BELICEK Michal wrote:

> I presume you have only one IDE channel on your mobo. If you have
> only one harddisc you can add the cdrom drive on the same cable as
> your hdd. Hdd will be master, cdrom will be slave.

  Hang on a sec.

  [All of this stuff *assumes* that this is an ATAPI/EIDE CD-ROM drive.
2x is far enough back that it might not be, in which case this whole
discussion is moot, and Andre's friend needs to find an old sound card
with the right kind of proprietary CD-ROM interface on it.]

  The standard maximum capacity of a CD-ROM is 650 MB.  I believe the
maximum drive size for vanilla IDE (what you have if there's a single
connector...) is ~500 MB....
  Some ATAPI CD-ROM drives will appear to work on a vanilla IDE
interface, but may not read an entire CD -- others may not work at all.

  To properly support an ATAPI CD-ROM, you need EIDE and not just IDE;
this, in turn, will almost certainly provide TWO connectors.
  [It is just possible that a vendor like Compaq could sell a machine
with an EIDE controller on board, but only one connector.  Improbable,
I think, but possible.]

  So my recommendation would be to install an EIDE controller card,
moving the hard drive to one of its connectors and the CD-ROM drive to
the other[*], and use the CMOS setup configuration to disable the on-
board IDE controller.
  My preferred EIDE boards in the 486 era were made by DTC, the 2278E
for VLB systems and the 2280 for ISA.  You may still be able to find
these around, especially in electronics surplus stores.

[*] With equipment of that generation, putting the HD and CD on a
single controller channel/connector is likely to slow the HD a bit.
This system doesn't need that kind of help.


David G

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