combo drive problem(spooky)

[9lives]

I have a very spooky problem :

I just bought a Combo Drive recently(less than a week old). It was not able to detect normal CD very well, it couldn't read most CDs at all. (Machine A)

So, I plugged it into another PC and it worked, it was able to read the same few CDs that I tested. (machine B)

I plugged back to my PC . I removed all my 3 HDDs and sound card (I thought that's something to do with my PSU; not enough power), I plugged the mulax into the combo drive and the Cd-rom keep spinning/looking/reading the CD. I had changed a new IDE cable and it did no help. (machine A)

On machine B, I also tested by plugging in the mulax only, the CD-ROm spin for a while and stop. That's normal. That's the way cd-rom drive behave.

I have also brought the combo drive to the shop and the owner tested it for me. It was working fine.


So, what do you guys thing??? PSU problem? I already removed all my hard disks. Or mother board problem?

I am using 250watt PSU, is it suitable for combo drive?

Thanks in advance.

 

[eofeapr]

I would not wnat to give you advice that will have you spend needlessly but a 250 power supply does'nt sound like it's enough.

Consider this, 3 hard drives, 2 cd roms , and using expansions slots also (they need juice too).

All of these need power not to mention the little things like RAM, CPU, and such <U>on an as needed basis</U>.

My guess is you need to go with at least a good 350 to 400 watt, a decent one ( 50 or 60 bucks ) not a cheap one.

And I'd get the 400 for future headroom.

Just food for thought, hope it helps you work it through.

 

[9lives]

I already mentioned in my previous post, I have removed all HDDs and sound card.

 

[9lives]

bump

 

[jmagg]

I plugged back to my PC . I removed all my 3 HDDs and sound card (I thought that's something to do with my PSU; not enough power), I plugged the mulax into the combo drive and the Cd-rom keep spinning/looking/reading the CD. I had changed a new IDE cable and it did no help. (machine A)

So you tried to boot from the cd/dvd rom with no harddrive?

Try the os harddrive on primary set to master and the optical on secondary set to master with a new cable.(only the 2 drives)

If no go, try to boot the harddrive from the secondary master with no other drives attached.(only one drive)

That should confirn that both channels are working correctly.

If your trying to run the optical from a pci controller card thats probably the problem.

Also try configuring the drives as master/slave....No go?

Try cable select for all.