how do i do this, i installed my writer fine but it doesnt recognize on windows or anything it has power, so i am thinking that i need to set it to master, how do i do this>?
Your question really should be in this forum. http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/77 The setting is done on the back of the dvdrw with a jumper. If windows doesn't recognize it thats probably not your problem. Go int device manager and see if it shows up there. If it does, disable it then reboot and let windows locate it. You may have to go back and enable it. Is this the only drive on you system? If you have 2 drives and their both on the same IDE cable then 1 needs to be master and the other slave.
If you have Cable Select, the master setting is at the end (not the middle) of the flat cable and you don't have to worry about the pins in the back of the drive.
I will try explain the difference between "master" and "slave"
Despite the hierarchical-sounding names of "master" and "slave", the master drive does not have any special status compared to the slave one; they are really equals in most respects. The slave drive doesn't rely on the master drive for its operation or anything like that, despite the names (which are poorly-chosen--in the standards the master is usually just "drive 0" and the slave "drive 1"). The only practical difference between master and slave is that the PC considers the master "first" and the slave "second" in general terms. For example, DOS/Windows will assign drive letters to the master drive before the slave drive. If you have a master and slave on the primary IDE channel and each has only one regular, primary partition, the master will be "C:" and the slave "D:". This means that the master drive (on the primary channel) is the one that is booted, and not the slave.
So you see there really isn't any difference, but us computer geeks have just been so used to the old way of doing thing's that the process of hooking up drives is kind of a habit. With the newer DMA/Ultra DMA out you are supposed to hook the master drive up to the end of the cable (black end) and the slave in the middle (gray end) where on the older PIo mode drives you would put the master on the middle and the slave on the end.
Another note; If you are using DMA mode you really need to be using an 80 wire IDE cable (should have Blue, Gray, & Black connector) This is the standard for DMA so if you are using the older 40 wire cable this could be your problem also.
Anyway to use cable select you need a special cable, and these are of course non-standard, making them a special purchase. Also, many people don't understand cable select, nor do they realize it needs a special cable. If you set both drives to "CS" and then use them on a regular (non-cable-select) IDE cable, both drives will configure themselves as "master", causing a configuration conflict.
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That is not on my webpage. Maybe I will make a completly different page for PC setup and that would be there. In fact I think I just might do that seeing how that is more my area of expertise anyway. :-)
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