Ide

[waco]

Is it possible to run an IDE hard drive and an IDE optical drive from the same IDE cable? I'm upgrading my wife's computer and I couldn't find a AM2 mobo with two IDE connectors and don't feel like replacing the optical drives for SATA ones. She don't use them but the hard drive is an IDE unit. Maybe cable select would work. As Fat Albert used to say, "I dunno!"

[Ickie]

make hd master and the optical drive slave
use the pin configerator on back od drives

[stansdds]

What Ickie said.

[waco]

Thanx guys! The wife's computer is so old, the mobo has a 754 socket. I must've built it about 5 or 6 years ago, and all the drives are IDE. I'm putting a new psu, mobo, cpu, memory, & video cards in the case. The hard drive is a 80GB WD IDE unit with Winders installed and is still over 75% empty. Plus the burner and reader are practically unused, so I figure she's getting a darn good computer for what she does for half price. I'll leave both the optical drives in the case, but leave one disconnected. Any thoughts about which one I should connect?

[stansdds]

I would think that any CD burner is also a disc reader, so unless you are copying discs, there is no need for two these days.

[Moparmike]

Yup, you can hook both a HDD and an optical drive to the same IDE channel. Be aware that both devices will run at the speed of the slowest device on the channel. Most optical drives run slower than an IDE100/133 speed so your hard drive will slow down it's communications a bit. On a general-use/surfing rig this normally isn't a problem...I wouldn't do it on a gaming rig though.

Another option (if your new MoBo has SATA channels) is to find a SATA to IDE adapter. It'll plug onto the back of an IDE drive and allw you to hook it to a SATA channel.
Something like these...
http://www.amazon.com/Addonics-ADIDESA-Mbps-Serial-Converter/dp/B000090169/ref=pd_sim_dbs_e_6
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000MYK6SU/ref=asc_df_B000MYK6SU716062?smid=A2PTR6MMOG537M&tag=shopzilla_rev_357-20&linkCode=asn

[waco]

Mike, never heard of that adapter. That'd let me hook up both optical drives to the IDE cable and the hard drive to a SATA connector. That make sense? I wanted to get the machine running for my wife and later maybe buy a SATA hard drive, and xfr an image of the OS onto it. She doesn't need much for her browsing. Just more speed. It doesn't help her wireless connection goes the length of the house besides upstairs to downstairs. I plan to hard wire her computer Internet connection some time this spring.

[waco]

Moparmike (http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/member.php?u=10)
Ordered one of those ide/sata adapters from Newegg. Thanx for the HU. :ernae:

[Moparmike]

Good deal! Glad they are of help.

If anyone would happen to need em, you can also get the "reverse" version of those adaptors too. Let's you plug a SATA drive into a PATA/IDE channel.

I have a couple of each style in my parts box for troubleshooting if I need to swap drives from one machine to another. Comes in handy on service calls when I'm not sure what interface the customer's machine has.