BIOS settings for Zip drive.. master? slave?

[smp]

Hi.. I got this Zip drive, 100 megs. It was bundled with this system that I baught. A system that I didn't put together (since I'de probably kill it).. I install the Zip utilities and drivers.. and it doesn't find the drive. On the package (oem envelope) it says to disable auto detect in the bios and to make sure the jumper is set accordingly. I'm ready to assume that the retailer set the jumper properly (I don't want to get into that just yet).. I never really understood master and slave. I think it's something to do with the way the devices are hooked up to the mobo/cable. The end of the cable is stuck to the zip, and the middle (or second one) is stuck on the hdd. My guess was that the hdd was master, and the zip slave. I changed the bios settings, set the slave to zip 100 (didn't change anything else, was unclear, but there are a few more settings there).. I booted, nothing, it siad no master no slave.. so I switched them.. made the master the zip, and hdd slave.. same thing.. I don't know what to do to get this thing to work. I'm pretty sure that the trick is in the bios settings.. but I'm not sure.. I'm doing all of this on a A7V with the award bios. If someone has had to do the same setup, please let me know. Thanks.

 

[Wuming]

with the drive connected to the end of the ide cable it means the drive is a master, while the middle one would be the slave.

since you tried that before, it may be possible that when u swapped the drives you did not change their jumpers to master or slave correspondingly.

 

[mindiris]

I'm not too familiar with IDE Zip drives, but any IDE/ATAPI drive should have the same basic setup. If the drive is the only one on the IDE cable, the drive must be master. If it isn't, and the other hardrive or CDROM or other drive already exists on the cable, set it to slave. Now, if for some reason the HD/CDROM was set to cable select, BOTH devices must be set to cable select, or use the Master/Slave combination for both drives.

That's it for physical connections. Just make sure the cables are plugged in the the proper orientation. Pin 1 (red or otherwise colored side of the cable) should be on the same side as pin 1 on the motherboard. Also plug in the power cables, and make sure it's all the way in.

Anything beyond that, just follow the instuctions for the Zip drive. Be aware however, some IDE/ATAPI drives really hate to be on the same cable as the other, no matter what the manual says. I had a POS JVC CDRW drive (slave) that refuses to work if plugged into the same cable as a Maxtor drive (master) I had.

 

[Smbu]

Did you check to make sure that jumpers are in the correct positions on the hd and zip drive? e.g. hd jumper set to master and zip jumper set to slave.

 

[bacillus]

if your zip is like the internal 250 model, then the slave setting is devoid of jumpers! Also make sure the ide cable is fully home or else the drive will not be seen.