Class Discussion: January 28, 2010

In our lab we added an second optical drive and had to set the different settings to master and slave. I am having a problem, as I have always, trying to figure out why these new technilogical devices have to have such a negative reference and implication, but I'm going to leave that alone. Back to the disucssion at hand.

Our lab was divided into groups and together we were able to connect the devices as well as the settings. Everyone in the group did their individual parts to succesfully connect our devices.
First, we had to open the motherboard. We took all precautionary steps to avoid any damage to the machine or the motherboard and its components. Once we opened up the case we placed the optical drive, a CD-RW drive, in the appropriate spot. The tower we were using allowed for up to 4 devices. We already had a DVD/CD-RW drive connected to our tower that was set to the Master setting by a jumper. A jumper designates the appropriate settings on the back of the device you are connecting. We connected the device using an IDE cable that allowed for two connections. We used the additional connector on the cable to connect our CD-RW drive. We then used another jumper to set our secondary device to ughhhhh...s-l-a-v-e! Ok, I did. I typed it. I'm moving on now. LOL. On our device, our secondary setting was the 2nd positon, out of three. I'll back it up for a minute. There are three different setting avaiable for connecting additional devices such as a Hard Drive and Optical Drives. The three options are:
1. Master
2. Slave
3. Cable Select
With this option the Cable actually recognizes the position of the devices automatically. It knows when to set which device as master or slave. There are two cable/connection options for optical drives.
1. IDE
2. SATA
We checked our connections by powering on the unit. We orginally had a little difficulty connecting, but our instructor showed us a technique we'll learn learn later in the semester that listens for a certain type of beep combination to test what might be wrong. The instuctor took out our memory card, our RAM, and realized that it wasn't sitting in the DIM correctly. Once he showed us that, it was corrected and we powered back on succesfully. Our instructor also showed us a different way of checking our settings to make sure we configured everything correctly. Once you turn on the tower, connecting it of course to a monitor and a power supply, wait for the Operating System prompt to pop up (or around that time) on your computer will tell you the key to press to get into the internal set up system.
This exercise is benefical both in personal computing as well as business solutions. Being able to enhance and add to existing machines.