No 80 conductor cable installed - Help plz :(

[Guest]

Hi guys, any help appreciated.
I've had some computer trouble over the last week with both my Power supply unit (ATX) and sound card dying.

Just to make sure it was my PSU, I borrowed one from a mate, and it worked fine. The computer seemed to power up but then it didnt post and I was left with a pure black screen. Upon removing my sound card the machine now POSTs/counts RAM etc...

...then it comes up with 'searching for IDE
devices....' and returned with the following message...

"Primary Master - None
Secondary Master - !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (it wasnt
exclamation marks but is was lines like it, without the dot heh)

Secondary IDE...No 80 conductor cable installed..."

then the screen changed to as if it was trying to boot up but came
back with system failure message, 'insert a system disk' - which I
of course, don't think I have one made up (Win98).

Does anyone have any ideas of what is wrong or how to fix it?

I'm sure I've plugged in the PSU correctly as surely it wouldnt get that far if I hadnt (?).

Any help appreciated
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[Lars_Coleman]

The first thing I would check is the cable. If you are using an 80 wire cable then I would replace it for a new one. If you replace the cable and it still does the same thing check BIOS settings or replace with a different drive to see if it does the same thing. It could just be a bad drive but it's hard to say at this point without trying those other things ...

<font color=red>BIOS updates do wonders ....</font color=red>

 

[Guest]

I've tried clearing the cmos (by a jumper switch on mobo), then restarting but my comp still asks for a system disk after detecting no ide drives.

Upon insertion of a system disk and trying to gain cd-rom support and/or running fdisk on the hd - c:\ or d:\ can't be detected

Any ideas? I'm desperate here argh!

My PSU is definitely screwed and I've been told my PSU could have 'fried' a few things...

...is it possible for it to have killed both my CD and HDD?

Could my motherboard be screwed (or even the IDE part of the mobo)? bearing in mind that the computer does POST at startup?

could it be my IDE cables that are fvcked? (I have no spare to test)

could it even be my mobo, hdd, and cd? (I sure as hell hope not!)

Any help appreciated greatly
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