Build problems

kcer

kcer

kcer

Associate
Joined
10 Aug 2006
Posts
122
Ok so it all arrived today in a nice, clean and shiny fashion ;)

It's all being set up in a Thermaltake Aguila case and so far the mboard, cpu, cpu cooler, psu and memory are all in the case and seem to be fine.

I'm having trouble with some of the internal connecters and jumpers. I've tried comparing them to my current machine but I decided that was unwise. Most of them are labelled with an S on one side, and from reading the manuals for both case and mboard I'm still unsure about how they're correctly placed. There are cables labelled IEEE1394, these aren't too much of a problem as I've figured the manuals on them and they're mainly single pin. Ditto with the 2 USB2.0 cables as they're 5 pin connecters and are pretty straight forward. The ones I'm having trouble with are the case LED connecters. These are 2 and 3 pin connecters marked with an S on the end of the cable, and called Power LED, Power SW and so on. What way should these be connected with regards the S?

Also, exluding the floppy drive, does it matter about the cable used to connect your optical drives? There is a cable labelled HDD Cable, but since my HD is SATA I figured it would be okay to use that, and also because its the only other one. I connected the PSU cables with a 1 cable run for the SATA and 1 run for the two optical drives.

They're the problems I'm having right now, but I'm sure more will arise.

If I did manage to mess a cable up or put one in the wrong place, what are the consequences? I cant really damage my system by hooking up, say, and optical drive wrong, could I?

Thanks
 
Its ok to connect the "HD" Power connectors to your Optical Drives. The manufactor just labelled them with "HD" to make it easy to understand. :rolleyes:
Its perfectly fine to connect 1 run of SATA power connectors to your harddrives, & use a second run from your PSU for the optical drives. Just connect everything with their appropriate connectors (if its a SATA device, use the 7pin Sata connectors, if it's an IDE device, use a 4pin molex connector).

Your other problem is a typical head-scratcher that every1 has to deal with on a new build. You have a bunch of 1pin, 2pin & 3pin leads for your Power Switch, Reset Switch, Case Tamper Button, Internal Speaker, Power LED, HD LED, etc. These leads are coming off the front panel of your Case & they need to be plugged into the frontheader of your mobo. You need to consult your mobo manual, and just figure it out (or post your mobo make/model here).
 
Thanks for the reply.

The mboard is an Asus M2N32.

As it happens I found small "template" plugs for the USB, 1394 and pin connectors. They were lingering in a small pack still in the mboard box. I think that will help. Ofcourse by this time it was 11pm and I was knackered. I'm 90% sure that the SATA and two opticals drives are set up right, the CPU, RAM and PCI cards will all be fine as I've replaced them before. After I sort out the IEEE, USB pins and the PSU cables I guess I can test it out. I can't think of anything I've missed and connecting up some LEDs wont be a disaster.
 
All is set up, but the motherboard just doesnt seem to detect the 2 optical drives. They aren't listed in the BIOS.

They're connected using that cable I spoke about called HDD Cable.

I've tried the jumper settings on both master, one master one slave and both on cable detect.

I'm out of ideas. Can anyone lend a hand?
 
Disconnect the opitcal drives, and do the following.

1) Set both drives to Cable Select.

2) Plug your IDE cable into your mobo, optical drive1 & drive2. One end of your IDE cable is meant for your mobo. You'll be able to tell which way round the cable should be, buy looking at the length between the end connectors & middle connector. The connector with the longest distance from the middle connector is the Mobo Connector.
ideec6.jpg


3)Plug one power connector into each drive
molexfemaleconnectoren8.jpg


4)Boot up.

If you dont see them in the bios, check that the bios is set to automatically find them.
 
Thanks for your reply.

They are set up and you illustrated now, yet the BIOS still doesnt seem to detect them.

Could you explain how this should be set up in BIOS?
 
I've just been looking at that IDE pic, and it looks like the connectors are incorrect. The Mobo end is actually the Master & the Master is the Mobo connector. Damn, that throws out my theory of the longest length between the end connector & middle connector is the master.

Anyway, go into your bios. Go into the "Standard Cmos Featues".
Choose the IDE channels for your optical drives. Set them both to "Auto Detect". Then try setting anything else on that screen to auto (eg Extended IDE Drive & Access Mode).

Save to Cmos & reboot.
 
I've been looking at my ide cable, and it is how I described it originally. But, the connectors on that pic are definately setup for mobo>slave>master. Puzzled
 
Should the IDE cable I'm using be ok? The fact its labelled as HDD Cable kind of throws me off. But IDE is IDE right?
 
Still no luck I'm afraid.

I've had both jumpers on CS, the furthest on the cable as master the other slave and vice versa.

Just so you know I'm trying to connect two Sony drives. One being a CD/DVD-ROM and the other a CD/DVD-RW Drive.

The options in BIOS (AwardBIOS) for IDE1 and IDE2 both appear to be set on AUTO, or atleast the options in the submenu are (PIO Mode, UDMA etc) yet still no luck.

Is this a problem with the drive's jumper settings? What are the chances of a dodgy IDE cable or even (I hope not) a bad IDE connection to the mobo?

Thanks for any help.
 
Try using that ide cable with your harddrives. if that doesnt work, then its the cable.
If it does work, then test the drives on the HD's mobo connection.
 
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