Plextor Woes

I had some free time yesterday, so I decided to install my new Plextor CDR drive (20x write / 10x rewrite / 40x read / 12x DVD-read). Installation was fairly simple, especially since my on-board second IDE controller was yet unused. So, I just left the drive jumpers at the default “Master”, and connected the data and power cables.

I booted the box, and the drive showed up in the BIOS’s drive report. My OS booted and it saw the drive. However, I couldn't get it to read any discs — it just kept saying “Insert disc into drive G:”.

At first I was frustrated, but then I remembered that I had run into this problem before. Back when I was adding a second hard drive, a whopping (at the time) 4.3 GB Seagate, I couldn't get it to work either on the second IDE channel. I ended up setting it up as a Slave on the primary IDE channel, and that worked out fine.

So, I’m thinking that my on-board second IDE channel may be bad (since it’s now been two drives that haven't worked there). So, I’m about to head off to Fry’s to pick up a PCI IDE controller (Promise, likely). They’re only about $30, so I can live with that (and, with any luck, Fry's won’t have too much of a markup).

Part of me is thinking of another avenue. Jason has an old Abit KT7A-RAID that he’s offered to sell to me in the past. I had declined, primarily because I had planned on building a dual Athlon MP box (and that motherboard only supports up to 1.2 GHz chips anyhow). But I’m now realizing that for a bit more than the price of replacing the IDE controller (about $30), I might be able to get a significant upgrade instead…

I can get a 1.2 GHz Athlon for about $50, and an Abit KT7A-RAID sells for about $80, so maybe Jason would be willing to sell me his Abit for $50. If that were to work out, I’d just about have a new machine for about $100! And, as I currently run at 700 MHz (Athlon), the jump to 1.2 GHz would not be insignificant. Hmm <evil grin>.