Help with my CD Drive

[Raveness]

I have an old PC (P 100) that I am building for a friend and I cannot get the BIOS to see the CD Drive. It was ok in the past. Regardless of how many CD Drives I try, the different IDE cables, manually set my BIOS or master/slave/CS, still get nothing. If someone can help, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks!

 

[fiask0]

this may sound really, really stupid, but check your cable, not only that it's connected right, but try swapping out cables, maybe you have a bad cable.

 

[frewOFstew]

I don't know if you have the option in this old board's bios...but if so, you might try setting bios to defaults and see if this works......good luck......frew

 

[Raveness]

I have tried many known good IDE cables (both 40- and 80-pin), as well as check to see if they are connected properly and seated tightly, but I still experience the same problem.

But, thank you for your time though, I really appreciate it.

 

[Raveness]

To Frew,

I think there might be default settings for this mb, I will give it a shot to see what happens. It is a mb from Micron computers.

Anyway, thanks for your response to this. Take care.

 

[Raveness]

I tried to load the default settings for my mobo, but that still didn't take care of the problem. I have tried all available power connecters, change the jumper settings, checked for bent pins, installed the hard drive on both the primary and sec IDE (both IDE's see the HD, but not CD), and probably everything that can be done, but the BIOS still wont see my CD drive.

Would you or anyone happen to have any other suggestions?

 

[Raveness]

Update on my CD drive problem. Although I still cannot get the BIOS to see the CD drive, I tried a few other things. First, I changed the battery on my mobo, thought if the battery was going bad, it wouldn't see the drive. I have tried using a stronger PS (went from 200W to 300W). I also switched out the hard drive (it died), thinking that maybe a near-dead/dead hard drive would prevent the CD drive from being seen. Regardless of my efforts, the BIOS still doesn't see the CD drive. In my BIOS, it doesn't give me the option of "CD". The only options are Rsrv, User, and Auto. I have tried Auto and Rsrv and it still didn't work. Under User, CD is nowhere to be found, it only gives settings for hard drives.

So, with all that being said, does anyone have anything else for me to try? A very, very frustrated person needs your help!


<b><font color=blue>"May the wings of angels surround and protect you from all the worries
and fears as you walk into the fog of reality."</font color=blue></b>

 

[vk2amv]

Ahh one thing. Most old bios`s cant see cdroms in them anyway. If you just load the cdrom drivers from dos/windows it will/should work. You are trying for nothing because I have NEVER EVER seen a motherboard from around that era nativly see the cd drive.
AREA_1

 

[Raveness]

Thank you for your input, but the CD drive was working a couple of years ago. I understand that the BIOS is old, but it was working. I work in our Technical Services Department (we deal with the network and PC's)at my college, and there are PC's with BIOS as old as mine. They are from PC's such as NEC, Digital, AST, etc. They all have Pentium 100 with mostly the same BIOS as I have, and all can see the CD drives. The BIOS I have (as well as the others) is Phoenix. What version, I don't know. All I know, I have brought my computer to work and compared it to the others, and there are no differences. I have even tried the CD drives attached to the boxes at work to mine, and mine will refuse to see the CD drive. But yet, when I put another HDD on that same IDE channel, the HDD can be seen, and it works. I have also loaded the CD ROM drivers, and it still doesn't work. What I don't get, how could any HDD be seen on the same IDE channel, but no CD drive can be seen (when I know that BIOS can natively see it). If my mobo, BIOS, or even the channel was bad, wouldn't the second HDD not be seen as well?

This is very frustrating!! Sometimes I hate computers! I guess that's why there's job stability there!

<b><font color=blue>"May the wings of angels surround and protect you from all the worries
and fears as you walk into the fog of reality."</font color=blue></b>

 

[Raveness]

Ok, in regard to my post just prior to this one, does anyone have a solution to my CD drive problem? I know this post has been read since my last post. Please help me! I think I have tried everything. :frown:

Thank you again.

<b><font color=blue>"May the wings of angels surround and protect you from all the worries
and fears as you walk into the fog of reality."</font color=blue></b>

 

[o1die]

My mobo wouldn't see my new burner until I loaded the software using the burner instead of my regular cd-rom. Check the jumpers on the cd and any devices connected to the same cable. Perhaps one of the jumpers fell off. Not likely, but you never know. I always use master and slave settings, not cable select. If you make a jumper change, try going back into the bios and look for any auto-detect modes and use it. Good luck.

 

[Raveness]

I checked the jumpers (again) on the CD drive and the hard drive, and the jumper caps are all on. I took the caps off and replaced them on my jumpers and went back into the BIOS and still cannot detect the CD drive. Again, any hard drive can be seen from both the Pri and Sec IDE's, but when it comes to a CD drive, none can be seen. I also tried another mobo (Iwill, the model number, I am uncertain, like P55 something rather), and that won't even see the CD drives. I loaded all the mobo software that was included with the mobo, and still nothing. What could be the problem here. These are all known good CD drives and cables.

<b><font color=blue>"May the wings of angels surround and protect you from all the worries
and fears as you walk into the fog of reality."</font color=blue></b>

 

[Raveness]

Ok, short of trashing my mobo's, are there any other ideas/advice in regard to my BIOS/CD Drive problem?

<b><font color=blue>"May the wings of angels surround and protect you from all the worries
and fears as you walk into the fog of reality."</font color=blue></b>

 

[tombance]

This may sound REALLY Stupid, but if you bios has an option, make sure you 'Autodetect Hard Drives'. I installed a new CD-ROM once and it wasnt detected at boot until I went into the bios and ran the Autodetect utility. Give it a go.