I just bought a new machine to make into a media center but when I connect the cd drive to the power and the IDE cable ( When connected just to the power it is fine ) it wont work it wont get powered. The drive is a Phillips CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive Model #PD2850BM/17 and the motherboard is an EliteGroup Geforce6100 PM MicroATX board. The Power supply is the standard one that came with the case a 400w psu, the case is a Linkworld Black body/ Silver strip Steel 6280-01 Micro ATX Media Center. Any ideas on what could be the problem.

Also any place that has a good guide to getting the bios setup and reading the addon devices.

Thanks

Is it single drive or is there another optical or hard drive on the same cable?

If it is single drive, then it must be set as "slave". Also check polarity of the cable on both ends.. (in case you flipped it upside-down)

If there is a hard drive on the same cable, then the hard drive MUST be set as "master" and CD drive as "slave". Otherwise CD drive won't work.

If there is an optical drive, then one of them must be "master" and other must be "slave".. Which is which, that is of little or no importance.

Also, if you still can't get it to work, then try different 40-pin (or 80-pin) cable. It might be defective.

Anyway, if you still have troubles with the drive, let me know. There are other solutions, but you should try the above first.


Quick BIOS tutorial:

Press (usually) DEL while booting to enter BIOS setup.

Set all IDE channels on "auto-detect"
If you don't see the IDE channels settings on the first screen, browse trough the setup program a little.

Save the settings.

I just the tried the above solution and nothing happened the same thing where if just the 4pin molex is connected it works but if the ide cable is connected to it doesnt.

I think that you should (giving that the above solutions haven't worked) consider either replacing the obviously faulty optical drive, or replacing it with some other vendor/model that is compatible with your mobo, in case this one isn't. The warranty should cover the faulty equipment. You should use it.

Worst case scenario (for the manufacturer, that is) is if the Mobo is the faulty one here. In such case RMA the mobo, and you're set.

Long story short: it is either mobo, optical drive or the connection in between.

alright thanks for your help i had a feeling it would come to this, I tried to go buy a sata optical drive from microcenter yesterday but their pricing was awful.

If I was you, I would try another IDE drive (with 80-pin cable). Prices are much better.

I just built the whole system over again and it worked. must of messed something else up.