Although I have a hard time understanding why you would want to - you CAN
use only the secondary IDE port if you wish. Most important are the master
and slave settings on the IDE devices, not the placement on the ribbon cable
or the port..

BTW: The primary is never referred to as a master and the secondary is never
referred to as a slave - The reason for this is you can have both a master
and a slave on the primary and both a master and a slave on the secondary.

Dean Antalik
Acom Computer Service


 -----Original Message-----
From:   PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]  On Behalf Of
[log in to unmask]
Sent:   Saturday, October 02, 1999 3:50 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        [PCBUILD] attaching IDE/ATAPI devices

The typical mother board has two IDE channels with two devices allowed on
each channel, usually referred to as primary and secondary (or sometimes
master and slave). The question is: when attaching only one device to a
channel, is it necessary to attach it to the primary (or master)
connection? Or is it possible to leave that empty and attach one device
(such as a CD-ROM drive) to the secondary (slave) connection only?

   Phil Parker

--------------------------------------------
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