Installing new CD R/RW

[asthmatic camel]

Heh! I'd buy you a drink next time I'm through Blighty to celebrate the Ashes victory, but it will have to be a weak fizzy orange now, I guess.

I'm allowed to drink 21 units of alcohol a week, which amounts to about 10 pints of average British beer. 10 pints a week? Hah! I used to drink 10 pints an evening, with a couple of scotches to finish off with.

The weak, sugar free orange with sweeteners gives me the S**ts. I'm stuck with Perrier.

 

[Doc Dish]

Problem solved! One of the pins was bent on the cable socket; a little careful fiddling and hey presto! Fixed.

Thanks guys.

Something I have learned about PCs: If the cable doesn't go on smoothly first time, check the pins!

 

[asthmatic camel]

Something I have learned about PCs: If the cable doesn't go on smoothly first time, check the pins!

NOW you tell me.

 

[ShowMe]

10 out of 10 ShowMe! Tried the drive in this machine instead of my old Artec cd r/wr drive and it screws up everything on that cable. I got the message that my existing dvd rom is not ATAPI compatible. Errrr....

The Compaq picks up and installs the old Artec drive automatically.

Seems I've been flogging a dead horse.

Not really, getting rid of what it's not is a huge step to finding out what is wrong.

That leaves you with : Operating system, power on the board, controller, or anything in between.

At this point I would check:

1.) Power to the CD/RW. Unplug a ahrd drive you know works & swap the power cables.

2.) Cabling. This includes those things the cable plugs into; pushed pins in the cable, bent pins on teh controller / CD can certainly cause your headache.

3.) BIOS of the machine. Compaq BIOS is pretty easy to update, from what I recall. Boot with the disk, run it & it's updated.

4.) Operating system. Check the driver for the IDE controller. sometimes the dual IDE controllers get flaky.

 

[ShowMe]

Problem solved! One of the pins was bent on the cable socket; a little careful fiddling and hey presto! Fixed.

Thanks guys.

Well, darn, you think i could have read an extra two messages before replying.

Glad you got it up and running!

 

[asthmatic camel]

Well, darn, you think i could have read an extra two messages before replying.

Glad you got it up and running!

Heh, being a rank amateur in all things IT, I'm really rather proud of myself for getting this old pc working again. With a little more memory this machine, whilst still old, will be a big, free bonus to the charity I'm involved with.

Enormous amounts of genuine thanks to everyone who replied; you're all wonderful.