🚀 go-pugleaf

In article: <30afa3f4.5068356@disrupt.demon.co.uk>  jeff@jhartley.demon.co.uk (Jeff Hartley) 
writes:
> 
> I have just bought a Mitsumi 4X CD rom drive IDE (FX400). The
> installation docs for my EIDE card say to plug the CD rom into the
> second port (I have 2 HD's on the first port),enable the second IDE port
> in my Ami Win Bios and enable LBA mode for that port. When the system
> boots, no CD rom is found, both my HD's are detected but there is a
> pause  while I suppose the system is searching for a device on the
> second port. After five seconds of pausing the machine boots as normal,
> the CD is detected through running its driver and all is hunky-dory.
> 
> I have also found that I can boot my machine with the CD by doing none
> of the above. By this I mean that I just plug the CD into port 2,
> disable port2 in my BIOS, disable LBA and re-boot. The CD is detected
> just the same once its device is loaded.
> 
> My question is:
> 
> Which method is correct and should an IDE CD-Rom be treated as another
> HD as the EIDE card suggests. Intuiton suggests that it should but
> experience says not.
> 
Jeff,

The PC requires an ATA-PI (AT Attachment Packet Interface) device 
driver to communicate with this type of CD-ROM drive, so the CD-ROM 
interface is *not* like a HDD, except at the hardware level.
 
Telling the BIOS to look for a hard disk drive on the secondary 
controller leads to a time-delay while the BIOS attempts to initialise 
the drive.  The BIOS gets no reply from the CD-ROM drive and times out. 

So what you have done is correct, and telling the BIOS to look for a 
drive on the secondary IDE port is literally a waste of time. The
drive manufacturer *may* have meant you to enable the secondary IDE 
port hardware, but I am only guessing here.

You can get an excellent FAQ about enhanced IDE and ATA-PI by e-mail 
from pieterh@sci.kun.nl by sending a message with "ATA-2 FAQ please" 
in the Subject: header. The body of the message will be ignored.

HTH
-- 
andy nicol (nd@garioch.demon.co.uk)
..most drivers starting on a new journey will, regardless of their hurry, pause
to consult a map. They have learnt the difference between speed and progress.
                       Watts S. Humphrey, Managing the Software Process.