Why would the Master drive have to be plugged into the first connector on IDE

[jim.mar]

On  another thread, BLOCKHEAD made the following statement
"When I took the computer apart I didn't replace the IDE Hard drive cable correctly...   I had the jumper pin set on Master while using the second connector on the cable, instead of the first one...   Bad cable configuration"

  Why would having the jumper set on "master" while connected to the second plug be critical?    I need to know as I am replacing my two hard drives.   One (the slave) will be connected to IDE cable while the Main one (with the OS) will be SATA.  Do I need to assign master and slave and do I need to be particular which IDE connector i use on the slave?
 

[patio]

MBoard============================Slave=======Master.

Some machines don't like cable select so it's good to know the proper way.

Most issues from this are on older machines but it's the proper setup.

[Quantos]

"When I took the computer apart I didn't replace the IDE Hard drive cable correctly...   I had the jumper pin set on Master while using the second connector on the cable, instead of the first one...   Bad cable configuration"

  Why would having the jumper set on "master" while connected to the second plug be critical?    I need to know as I am replacing my two hard drives.   One (the slave) will be connected to IDE cable while the Main one (with the OS) will be SATA.  Do I need to assign master and slave and do I need to be particular which IDE connector i use on the slave?

If the EIDE HDD is going to be on it's own controller, then leave it set as master and place it on the end connector of the ribbon cable.

[Quantos]

Is your optical drive SATA or EIDE?

[jim.mar]

Neither drive is OPTICAL.   The new one is SATA II while the old one is EIDE.   The new one will have the OS and Apps. installed on it while the old one is for data storage...

[Quantos]

What I mean is what interface does your optical drive(CD/DVD drives are optical drives) use.

[jim.mar]

I have two optical drives, An old DVD/CD ROM that is on EIDE and a newer (one year) DVD/CD burner that is SATA. 
Had a problem with the new one on SATA for a while.    I  checked it with a SATA/EIDE - USB adapter to see if the unit was working at all.   It passed that test so then I reconnected it and all was good.   Thanks for looking, JIM

[Quantos]

If you are still going to use the EIDE optical drive, then make sure it is jumpered as a slave and put it on the slave position on the ribbon for the EIDE HDD.

[jim.mar]

So the position at the end, #1,  is the "master" and the one in the middle is for the "slave" ? ?  And you are saying that I want the EIDE HD, which is the "slave" hard drive will be in positon 1, and the EIDE Optical CD ROM, will be designated slave and will be in position 2?   Both on the same EIDE cable?  Do I set the bios boot sequence for the Master or slave CD ROM as #1?  Wow, that is confusing.....but I can do that< I think,   might take some physicla rearanging of my components.   Thanks a lot,

[patio]

Doesn't that MBoard have 2 IDE channels on it ? ?
If so and you only have one IDE HDD and one IDE optical drive the best setup would be to jumper them both as master and have them on seperate channels...
Unless i missed something.

[hot dog]

MBoard============================Slave=======Master.

That's odd..

In a book I have the master/slave configuration looks like this:

MBoard======================Master==========Slave


Does it depend on the cable? I think I read somewhere that some cables use your example as the master/slave configuration, but other cables use the example I gave...


BTW, I like your cable diagram     I think I'll use it from now on...

[patio]

No there is only 1 type of cable...

The book is mis-informed.

[hot dog]

No there is only 1 type of cable...

The book is mis-informed.

Well, that's what I get for reading out of one of those "dummies" books...  You have to be a real dummie in the first place I guess, to buy them...Believe me, there are numerous other mistakes in the book.

[hot dog]

well, just to add an interesting note..

The only hard drive I use in my computer is a western digital EIDE drive... and I keep it set on cable select..

Just as an experiment...  I switched the jumper to master, leaving it on the connector closest to the mboard, then added another IBM Hard drive to the connector furthest away from the mboard, setting it as slave...

Lo and behold in cmos it lists the western digital HD as Master and the IBM HD as slave.... Like this:  mboard===========West.Dig=====IBM

I'm also able to boot to the slave drive without any problems....