I have an old computer that I decided to dig out of the closet and piddle with. The problem is that I can't get it to recognize the any cd-rom. It is a 1996 model computer. It has pci and isa slots so I was able to dig out an ISA controller board out of another computer that I know works and install it in one of the ISA slots. Here is how it all started. I had to find a drive for it because I removed the other a long time ago. I found one which was 218MB that works and installed it. It didn't have a bootable OS on it so, I installed msdos 6.22. When I connected the cdrom to the same ribbon cable the hard drive was connected to, the computer would freeze as it was booting. I would then unplug the cd-rom from the ribbon cable and it would continue to load. It was as I paused it. As it was continuing to load, I would reconnect it and it would freeze again. I then decided to install an add-on controller card and moved the hard drive, floppy and cd-drom to it. Same problem. I then connected the hard drive to the system board controller and connected the cd-rom to the add-on card. It would load without a problem but when I downloaded the drivers for the cd-rom, the computer says that there is no cd-rom drive installed. I ended up taking out the cd-rom and installed it in a modern computer with win XP installed and it worked without a problem. Anybody know what could be causing this? Thanks

Matt

does this computer have a cyrix cpu? sounds a bit daft, but i had a load of trouble with cyrix powered computers and CD drives.

I know that it's an Intel. It's been so long that I forgot exactly what model it is. I think it's a Pentium. The heatsink is glued to the top so, I pulled the chip and looked on the bottom which has the following printed : 95085854AA, next line : MALAY 519 S, next line : INTEL 1992. Down at the lower right is printed : A80501-60, next line : SX948

oh well it wasn't that then. rereading your post, it looks as if the BIOS is getting confused about which device ( hard drive and CD drive) is master and which is slave. check the jumpers on each device, the master should be the hard drive ( but not a master alone) and the cd drive should be slave.

I have the Hard drive set to master and the cd-rom set to slave. The ribbon cable has 2 connectors on one end and 1 connector on the other. the middle connector is labeled slave which is connected to the cd-rom drive and the connector on the end is labeled master which is connected to the hard drive. When both are connected, the computer freezes regardless of using the on board controller or the add-on controller. As far as the jumpers on the controller card, I don't know what they are set to because I don't have the manual for the card. The computer that the controller card came out of never had a cd-rom installed. I don't know if there is a special jumper configuration involved when installing a cd-rom drive or not. I just know that back in the old days, the BIOS couldn't detect a cd-rom drive like it could a floppy or hard-drive. You would have to install drivers for the cd-rom to be recognized by the system. I downloaded the proper drivers, but even after setup, the driver says that there are no cd-rom drives detected and it aborts.

I got it all taken care of. It turned out that 3 out of 4 IDE cables that I tried were bad. It wasn't until I got down to the last cable that both the hard drive and cd-rom started working. Thanks for the help.

Matt

Glad that you got it sorted! My next suggestion would have been to try a different cable.