jumpers

ricktea

If you have only one hardrive in a system
would you need to jumper it, to tell the system
that it is master ?

And what would cable select do. Thanks

sprkymrk

On newer systems and drives, usually having no jumpers at all will work, as will setting the jumpers for master/single. Cable select is usually the default from the factory and will work too, but you may have to make sure you are plugged into the proper cable end on an IDE system.

I'm not primarily a hardware guy though, this is just from my own personal experience over the years. I haven't messed much with hardware since about 6 years ago.

ricktea

thanks, on the not so new hardrives,, would you have
to set the jumpers on a 1 single hardrive to let the system know
whether it is master or slave.

TheShadow

Western digital drives use no jumper for a single drive on a cable, everyone else uses a jumper seagate, maxtor, fujitsu etc. Cable select can only be expected to work reliably on 80 wire/40 pin cables where the end plug is the master. With 40 wire/40 pin cables sometimes the middle connector was master if you had a single drive with (some/all?) brands leaving the other piece of the cable to flap as an unterminated antenna. Since all newer systems are expected to use 80 wire cables it is no longer a problem except for mom and pop store fronts trying to save a few cents when a third drive is added to a system. One 80 wire cable comes with even the cheapest motherboards so it is that second cable that becomes the concern.

ricktea

thanks for that explaination, it is an interesting subject,
and sometimes the books do not delve into it in more
detail. thanks, Ric