Drive Connection and Jumpering

Hello,

I have a Dell PowerEdge 600SC running the A09 BIOS. The mobo has 3 IDE
controllers. I have two IDE hard drives connected to the Primary IDE
controller, with one jumpered as the master and the other as the slave.
I have a DVD drive and a CD-ROM drive connected to the Secondary IDE
controller with the DVD drive jumpered as the master and the CD-ROM
drive as the slave. The system also has a connected 3.5" floppy drive.
There is currently nothing connected to the Tertiary IDE controller.

The BIOS and Windows XP both see all the drives, and I can use all the
drives without problems. However, now I have a need to configure both
the DVD and CD-ROM drives in the boot sequence, but I can only get one
of them at a time to show up in the boot sequence setting in the BIOS.
I can make it the DVD *or* the CD-ROM, but not both at the same time.

I've tried putting the DVD and CD-ROM drives on different controllers
and changing the jumper settings accordingly, but none of the
combinations I've tried have worked. The only combination that I have
not tried is putting the DVD drive on the same cable as the primary hard
drive, and the CD-ROM drive on the same cable as the secondary hard
drive, or vice versa (I've heard that can slow down hard drive
operation). What I would like is a boot order like the following:

DVD drive
CD-ROM drive
Hard drive
Floppy drive

How can I connect and jumper the drives in the system to get that boot
order?

Thanks for any help that you can offer.

--Tom

Sorry! Meant to post that to the hardware group. Please ignore.

--Tom

"Thomas M." wrote in message
...
Hello,

I have a Dell PowerEdge 600SC running the A09 BIOS. The mobo has 3 IDE
controllers. I have two IDE hard drives connected to the Primary IDE
controller, with one jumpered as the master and the other as the slave.
I have a DVD drive and a CD-ROM drive connected to the Secondary IDE
controller with the DVD drive jumpered as the master and the CD-ROM
drive as the slave. The system also has a connected 3.5" floppy drive.
There is currently nothing connected to the Tertiary IDE controller.

The BIOS and Windows XP both see all the drives, and I can use all the
drives without problems. However, now I have a need to configure both
the DVD and CD-ROM drives in the boot sequence, but I can only get one
of them at a time to show up in the boot sequence setting in the BIOS.
I can make it the DVD *or* the CD-ROM, but not both at the same time.

I've tried putting the DVD and CD-ROM drives on different controllers
and changing the jumper settings accordingly, but none of the
combinations I've tried have worked. The only combination that I have
not tried is putting the DVD drive on the same cable as the primary hard
drive, and the CD-ROM drive on the same cable as the secondary hard
drive, or vice versa (I've heard that can slow down hard drive
operation). What I would like is a boot order like the following:

DVD drive
CD-ROM drive
Hard drive
Floppy drive

How can I connect and jumper the drives in the system to get that boot
order?

Thanks for any help that you can offer.

--Tom

With the BIOSs I've seen the machines would boot off the following devices:
1. The master optical drive (if available)
2. The slave optical drive (if available)
3. The hard disk.
If this does not meet your requirements then asking the experts in a
hardware newsgroup might be a good idea. This is a Windows newsgroup, yet
nothing in your post is in any way related to Windows.