Build problems

kcer · 29 Aug 2006 at 22:40

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

kcer · 30 Aug 2006 at 10:53

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.

kcer · 31 Aug 2006 at 19:32

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?

kcer · 31 Aug 2006 at 20:03

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?

kcer · 31 Aug 2006 at 21:09

That's gonna be a tight fit I think. Are you sure?

kcer · 31 Aug 2006 at 21:43

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?

kcer · 1 Sep 2006 at 09:24

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.