I have an old Dell tower that had a HDD failure. It was a SATA HDD. I put a spare ATA133 I had in but here's my problem. There's only one ATA cable in the computer though if I try to put both the HDD and CD Drive on the same cable neither one works.

Is this normal? Can you not put both drives on the same cable? or is there something wrong with the cable maybe?

Incase this is confusing at all I'll explain below.

HD on master, slave empty; HD works
CD on master, slave empty; CD works
CD on master, HD on slave; nothing works
HD on master, CD on slave; nothing works

How are the jumpers on the two drives set? Either put them both on "Cable Select", or the hard drive on master, and the CD on slave and connect them to the right plugs on the cable.

Here are some pics of jumpers (http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=hard+drive+jumpers&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g2) on hard drives. Note the exact placement of the jumper varies from each manufacturer but there will be a diagram on the label.