CD Writer back in action !

Proud to be an Indian!

Finally, I achieved today, what I had been wanting to do for a long time. Not that its any great achievement. Nor that it couldn't have been achieved earlier. Just that didn't find the time and motivation to look into the problem with a view to solving it.

So, what was the problem, you may ask? If you've read my older post, you'll know that I had to unplug my CD drive to accommodate my newly purchased DVD-drive. Today, I asked my dad to get me an IDE (PATA) cable. For those, not in the loop, my PC has an 845-GL motherboard of 2004 vintage, that has no SATA slots, and no PCI-Express slots either.

I opened the cover of my PC to plug the new cable. But silly me that I am, I realised that both, Primary, and Secondary IDE slots had already been occupied: the HDD was sitting on the Primary, as expected; while the DVD-drive was connected on the secondary. "Now what to do?" I asked myself. The most reliable person in such situations is Jatin, my hardware-guru friend. I phoned him and hebrought it to my notice that every IDE cable has an additional connector approximately mid-way along the length of the cable. He mentioned that it can be used to connect another device on the same cable.

However, I was sure that both drives were set to be 'Master' according to their default jumper settings. I knew that if my new configuration is to work, one of them has to be made a slave. But I had no clue which jumper setting will be interpreted as slave. Thanks to my systematic approach to filing of device manuals, I was able to quickly locate the Sony manual. I saw the installation instructions chart, and figured out the way to connect my old drive as a slave on the secondary.

Fortunately, there also existed 2 extra 4-pin mole connectors, more than my requirement of a single-one. To sort issues out, I removed all IDE and power cables, and after a few rejigs, everything was set right. All drives had power and signal cables; they were connected in not only correct, but the optimal fashion; and the CD-drive was now a Secondary slave, while the DVD-drive was the Secondary master.

Another thing I'd like to bring to your notice, guys. Sometimes, simple solutions elude us. Unlike, I mentioned earlier, the extra connector on the IDE cable is not located exactly mid-way, but is rather close to one of its ends. Now, stupid as it may seem, I was connecting one of the two closely-placed connectors, onto the motherboard, and wondering how to connect the remaining two to the two drives. The solution, as I saw from Sony's manual, was to connect the far end on the motherboard, leaving the two closely-spaced connectors to be connected to the two closely-spaced drives. Simple!

So, what did we learn?

1. Always preserve device manuals in an easily retrievable manner
2. Analyse the situation at hand before ordering parts
3. Apply your logic to other peopls's advice, instead of following it blindly
4. Look for simple solutions when you are stuck in a problem
5. Remember, there is no problem without a solution, only if you are willing to devote enough resources to solving that problem