Me again :-)

WHATif

Senior member
Mar 26, 2001
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OK every thing is working...............
I have MSI K/t turbo/r (raid)motherboard.(only 1 HD right now)
The current status id -

IDE Primary master - none
IDE primary slave - Toshiba DVD ROM

IDE secondary master RICOH 12x burner
IDE secondary slave - zip

The hd is apparently on the promise controller thing that makes it act like scsi.... or something like that .........
Anyway

1st question - Is there difference in performance if the same device is connected as master or slave ???
I mean if imagine the Ricoh CD burner was on the slave channel would it be more difficult for it to reach its 12x burning speed compared to now when it is on the master channel ????

2nd question - How can I make the toshiba DVD...the primary master rather than the slave that it is now ????
On top of the toshiba matel case it shows 3 dots/tabs diagram ...I can see the master dot/diagram. Where is it located??? Do I have to press this tab when I locate it to make the Toshiba primary???

3rd question - On the MSI board I see 2 grey/whitish ide slots. Which take 4 ide devices.Now about 10-15 cm from them I see 2 blue similar looking connectors. 1 is free the other has the HD connected to it. I guess this is the Promise controler or whatever connection. Can I connect any of my IDE devices on that free slot ???
For example the DVD/toshiba ????
Do things connected to this blue connectors work at 100 dma something and the one connected to the white/grey IDE
connectors work at 66 DMA something ???
PLEASE enlighten this ignorant MAC user. I have had nothing but nightmare since I got this PC from the dealer.(lazy incompetent so and so)
Only since yesterday I have got all devices finally showing up. Now I just want to get to the bottom of all this and wipe some of my ignorance away. I come to you as a humble nobody.
Please spare few seconds.it will make a huge difference to my life.I want to get on and do my work rather than do things that the dealer was supposed to do properly. Welcome to the PC world.
 

DeeK

Senior member
Mar 25, 2000
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1. There's no speed difference between Primary and Secondary.

2. What you're probably looking at is the jumper diagram. Is there two rows of three pins? On the back of the DVD drive there should be something that looks similar, with a jumper covering two pins. There's three vertical positions for that jumper: Master, Slave, and Cable Select (not used). To change it to Master, move the jumper to the pins that the diagram says are for Master.

3. Sure, you can use any IDE device on the other Promise connector.
 

smp

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2000
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Master - Slave sounds like it implies a level of importance or something, but it doesn't. It's only a way for your bios to understand what is where. The performance is the same for both.
 

smp

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2000
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Oh.. sorry, was too impatient before to read the rest of your thread, thought you'd keep going on about master and slave ;).
The blue ones are for your ata 100 devices. The others are 66, but default to 33 if a 33 device is being used. I think they all do actually. They are backwards compatible anyways. Don't put your DVD on the ata 100, because DVD players aren't ata 100 devices. You could put a hard drive on there if you have a ata 100 hard drive. If your hard drive is 66, then even if you plug it into the blue, it will only run at 66. Don't worry about this though, there is no 'real world' difference between 100 and 66. I think that the max bandwidth a modern day IDE drive can atain is only like.. 35 MB/s anyways. <-- (someone correct me if I'm wrong)..

The promise controller doesn't make your IDE drive behave like a SCSI drive. Welcome to the world of PC's. The PC world demands that you know what you're doing more so than the Mac world. Why did you switch?

<edit> Sorry you CAN put your DVD player on the blue port, but it won't increase performance or anything. You should put your hard drive on there if it's a ata100 drive, but then you might need drivers for it. </edit>

<more> where's your HDD? Primary master right? It should be, should it not?
Maybe you should change the name of your topic so that it will attract more poeple? </more>
 

NelsonMuntz

Golden Member
Jun 14, 2001
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I answered some of this on the other post, but the last question wasn't over there. The blue ones are RAID controllers and since you only have one HD it isn't really utilizing the RAID capability. If you want to use that other one for one of your other devices then you will need to make a change in your BIOS to disable the RAID controller so that those just act like extra IDEs. I don't know if your board supports that or not. You might check the manual or the manufacturer's website to see if they have any info on that.
 

smp

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2000
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Oh yeah. That board has RAID. Right, sorry, on my board the blue ones are ata100, wasn't thinking. :eek:

Why did you make the switch though? Mac to PC?
 

WHATif

Senior member
Mar 26, 2001
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I switched because of the software I need to use/learn for Product design. All good 3d product design software is PC based. If I was only doing 2D design work then I would have never switched.
Although I am happy already that I switched as I have so many choices...........plus I still use Mac at work for 2d design + I have a Mac at home as well. Like I said before I am really impressed by the Athlon 1.33 CPU machine.

*Oh YES...I see the 4 pin like things. I thought it was some kind of connector. So If I press the correct tab. Then my toshiba/DVD rom should become primary master right ??? Although it sounds like there is really no need.

* Another question - I have RICOH 12x burner. I have never burned CDs on the PC side. I tried burning an audio CD (it has NERO software) and it failed.
It told me to do &quot;on the fly burning&quot; without having the source and the destination on the same ide channell. It does not apply anymore as I have the dvd rom and burner on different channel. It also said that the CD is copyrighted. I don,t get it aren't all audio CDs copyrighted......how the hell do they burn there music CDs ???
 

WHATif

Senior member
Mar 26, 2001
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I think I should maybe leave things as they are..............I am not gaining anything by connecting an IDE device to the blue/raid/EIDE promise controller whatever.
But should I press the tab and make the TOshiba DVD Primary master ??? or should I just leave things the way they are.
 

benjamit

Senior member
Dec 22, 2000
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you can put the dvd as master on the primary or leave it as slave no matter
just don't put the dvd and the burner on the same channel if you want on the fly burning , cd to cd, if you do you'll get buffer underruns from the differences between the buffer sizes between the dvd and the burner

also new macs have similar drive configurations as you are dealing with, master slave cable select issues, ever since apple stop have scsi as standard