OF MASTER & SLAVE IN PC


11 January 2006

Both the CD and DVD RW drive in my home PC conked out on me lately. They could neither read nor write any CDs. Made a trip to Low Yat Plaza over the long weekend and purchased a couple of new ones costing some RM250.

The following night, tried to install them. Opened up the CPU and took out the defunct units. Put the new drives in, hooked up all the cables and screwed the drives in place. Closed up the CPU and restarted. A piece of cake.

Computer boots up and detects new hardware - CD drive in E. Shit! What happened to my DVD drive in F? Click, click, click, nothing. Restart computer - nothing. Turn computer off completely and restart again - still nothing. OMG! Pull power off, open the CPU and recheck cables, everything in place. Maybe, I was given a faulty DVD drive. Shit, shit. OK calm down, lets test it. Unhook all cables and rewire only DVD. Power up and start. Ok, detected DVD in E drive.

Turn off power and recheck instructions, an A2 size foldable sheet printed in China! Why is it that a Japanese Sony DVD drive comes with instructions printed in China? Some diagrams with single phrase instructions, but there is something called master and slave with master shown on top of slave. Ok, maybe switch over the drives and put CD atop DVD instead. Unscrew everything, reinstall and rewire. Still does not work.

Pull out everything again and recheck thoroughly. #$%&??**@ !! Both bloody drives are masters. Why that stupid sales person gave me 2 masters and no slave. The contemplation of driving down all the way to Low Yat Plaza just made me crazy. It is almost midnite and I have been fiddling with these gadgets for the past 2 hours and my fingers are sore.

OK. One last attempt and thats it. Opened up the packaging again, took out and poured through the thickish booklet that was printed in 3 languages. Bingo! You can interchange a master / slave drive status by moving a small plastic thingy to cover 2 of the 6 exposed pins.

From then on, it was plain sailing. Within 20 minutes everything was up as it should be. To the computer guy at the counter the installation will perhaps take 15 minutes. I took 3 hours to figure it out. Nevertheless, to finally suceed is just as sweet. I went to bed smiling - satisfied at having learned something new. I am on my way to becoming computer savvy....soon.

Moral of the story. Read the instructions (if provided and legible) thoroughly before proceeding with the messing around. Now I understand why the Series "Computer for DUMMIES" are selling so well.

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