Please help-putting a system together

[Thira28]

I am putting together a system for my daughter and am having two problems.
I have just assembled the following components:
Gigabyte GA 7VRX
256 MB PNY Optima PC 2100 RAM
128 MB OC PC 2400 RAM
Diamond (NVidia) 16 MB video card
Athalon 1400 Processor
LiteOn 48x12x48x CDRW
Best Data 56K V.92/V.44 Modem
PC Concepts EZ Scroll Cordless Mouse
Memorex Keyboard
Maxtor 40 GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive

The Maxtor HDD is new, and as such has not been formatted yet. I plan to install WinXP Pro as the OS.

The Maxtor HDD is new, and as such has not been formatted yet.

I plan to install WinXP Pro as the OS.

Problem 1: On initial boot up, I get the message: "SEC SLAVE DRIVE- ATAPI Incompatible Press F1 to resume " I have checked the jumpers on the LiteOn CDRW, and the jumper is correctly set to master. The burner is alone on the secondary IDE slot.

Problem 2: If I hit F1, and have a boot floppy in the floppy drive (the BIOS is set to boot from the floppy first), the system does not recognize the floppy. The boot floppy has the f6 BIOS. My Gigabyte GA 7VRX BIOS is presently f5 and I would like to flash to f6.

The OS has not yet been installed

Thank you for the anticipated replies in advance.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

so you have the 40gig as primary master, and the cdrw as secondary master correct?
are the drives connected to the ends of ide cables? not the middle connector?
have you tried setting the cdrw up as a slave to the hard drive (same cable, middle connector for cdrw, switch jumper to slave on cdrw)?

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

one other thing, going into the bios (hit del on boot up), make sure they (the pri. master. pri slave. sec. master. sec slave) are set to auto
also see if the floppy shows up in there.

for the floppy problem. does the light come on? is it on all the time (if so flip the connector over attached to the floppy). not come on at all?(make sure you have the power plug inserted on it correctly)

 

[XeonTux]

Problem 1:

I would set the BIOS to have pri master and sec master as AUTO, and the two slaves as DISABLED.

And as previously mentioned, trying the HD & burner together on the same channel (tho not recommended for permanent use this way)

You might want to try the CD burner / cable in another PC (sounds like you have more than one)

Problem 2:

Is the BIOS setup for one floppy, and as 1.44MB 3.5"?

If you yank the cable for the secondary IDE channel (CD burner) do you still have the problem?

 

[Thira28]

FIxed the problem. I had the floppy cable connected in reverse. This then allowed me to flash the bios. Computer then correctly recognized the CDRW. BTW, I had the HDD as the Primary Master and the CDRW as the Master Slave.
Can anyone direct me to a site to optimize the BIOS settings?
Thanks