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dercoss

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Connecting an extra IDE Device...

I have somebody who wants to add an old zip drive to her new pc. Currently both IDE channels available are used by the 2 cd devices. The hard drive is a SATA device and there is no extra IDE Channel on the board.

Can you add something like a PCI card in to add extra IDE connections??

dc
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waffleironhead

you syre can, if you have a pci slot open,

hth
waffle
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waffleironhead

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I may be missing something, but why not put the two CD drives on the one IDE channel using Master and Slave jumpers on each drive, and then free up the other IDE channel for your ZIP drive? You can, as suggested, fit an auxillary pci IDE card to add two more channels for 4 devices.

Simon
thinkandbuild

this is most likely a newer system with only one ide channle, as stated above, they have 1 ide channel filled up, while the hd are set for sata

  1 ide channel(PATA)
  4 SATA channels

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Thanks, I'll get hold of the card now...

dc
I Agree with ThinkAndBuild.  If you only have 2 CDROM drives... and everything else is S-ATA... then you can still attach 2 more IDE devices without any additional add-on cards.

The CDROM drives right now have a jumper in the back setting them to master or slave.  When you add the Zip drive... just made sure that on the same IDE channel, it is the opposite of the other drive (on the same channel).  Your IDE cable will have to have 2 connectors on it of course.... the CDROM can be master, and the ZIP drive can be a slave. (make sure it's selected with a jumper... some of the zip drives may say they are slave without a jumper but tends to be unreliable)

Jeff
at yourtechonline.com
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No, as Mr Waffleironhead said, not if there is only one IDE Connection you can't. This is a Dell Inspiron pc and there is only the one IDE connection..

dc
fyi
take a look at the specs of an intel 915g mobo