I am almost done installing a new rig, would like some idea's as to the burner/writers . I have in my stock, a Benq1620/1655, Plextor760. Lite-on165ps6/. I am more then willing to purchase another drive if it would be more able, any ideas as to a good combo?

Most of the latest mobos can't host that many IDE burners. Out of above mentioned keep the BenQ's at least.

I can recommend a Pioneer DVDR-215 sata burner, link.

I always put just one drive in my (main) PC, and it's bound to be a Lite-On (short exceptions notwithstanding), but that's just me. They're true all-in-one drives (reading, ripping, burning, scanning,...) and easy to replace when a new one takes your fancy (you won't even see the difference ). Anything else I alternate in external enclosures.

The 1655 and 760A are icons of their day, so I would treat them accordingly. The 1620 would be good for a second scanning opinion.

I hope I wasn't misunderstood, I did not want to install all those drive's, but I would like to have two. Best two for scanning/burning, I have to install the harddrive and the two disks, could use some help on cofiguring master/slave combo's. I have more then one Benq 1655/1620, also have a Lite-on D24, (dont't have the exact model, it's in my garage), Any help as to the settings would be greatly appreciated.

As I said, and this is a personal choice - others will be different, the Lite-On 165P6S would be my "workhorse" drive in the PC and anything else goes external or in a backup PC. As it's not handy do do lots of scanning and TRT'ing (= waiting) on your main PC, I have no use for more than one drive in there.

But, since I believe this is your first shiny new build, you may want to put your two best drives in there, the 1655 and 760A, just to get to know them better and before taking the load off them, as they deserve. I'm assuming your hard drive is SATA, so we can disregard that here (no Master/Slave to set). But the two burners will probably have to share the same ribbon cable. The Master/Slave jumper is at the back of the drives and positions are marked. Jumper the 760A as Master and the 1655 as Slave. The long end of the ribbon cable goes onto the mobo, the master drive at the other end and the slave in the middle. I can't guarantee that the two drives will get along like that, as I never put more than one on the same cable, but that should be a good starting point.

Hope it works like that!

Hi, thanks for all the help, I installed the Dvd drives, the only problem so far is with the hard drive, I have two wires the, powersupply and a smaller one, I can't seem to find the connection for the smaller wire, is it on the motherboard somewhere?

New problem, just tried to boot it and I get no power, it came with the power board installed, so I didn't mess it up, cheked the power it is hooked up , it's good, cable is good. Any ideas?

Hi, yes it should fit on one of the SATA headers on the mobo. Did you get that Gigabyte board from your earlier thread? Looking closely on there you'll see SATA1 SATA2 SATA3 SATA4 together in a square. SATA1 is the logical place to hook up with your boot/system hard drive cable.

Did you connect the 4-pin CPU power connector from your PSU (bottom left corner in the picture above)?

Cressida, this is a mostly assembled barebone, the only thing that was left to do was install the drives and drivers, the mobo I have seems to be different for your display, I see no loose wires. Thanks for all the help . I only hope something is not defective, I hate going thru that RMA, send back thing.

OK that's different, I thought you might have gone for the mobo recommended a couple weeks ago in the hardware forum. I can't tell much about the barebone without seeing or knowing what's in there. Unless it's something special, you must have both the main 24-pin power connector and the 4-pin (sometimes 8-pin) CPU power connector attached to the board. And then the small connectors/wires for LEDs and switches in the case. I suppose you've meanwhile found the SATA ports on the mobo for connecting the hard drive though?

Does this help?
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Yes, that helps . I marked the connections for you below. Since you have two IDE channels, I would put each of your two burners on its own ribbon cable, both as Master.

The LED/SWITCH pins are marked and color-coded, but I'd double check them in the mobo manual if this is your first time. The LEDs will oly work in the correct orientation (+/-).

Again, thanks Cressida, will this correct the power up problem?

I don't know, but those mobo connections need to be in place for the PC to work .

So did the barebone come with a processor (CPU) and memory (RAM) installed?

Also, there may be an external On/Off (I/0) switch at the back of the Power Supply Unit (PSU).

Yes it came with everythig installed except the drives. I turned the power switch to on.

So nothing at all happens when you push in the PC power switch? No fans run, beeps sound, LEDs light up?

Nothing.

OK, provided you have checked all the connections shown in post #13 and provided that the CPU+Heatsink/Fan and the RAM stick(s) are installed correctly, there's only one more question I can ask and that's whether the two wires from your PC case's power switch are connected to pins #15 and #16 of the Front Panel Header on your mobo (see attached extract from your mobo manual).

Shorting those two pins momentarily should boot your system and allow you to enter the BIOS setup, even without any hard disk or optical drives attached. (You'll need a monitor and keyboard to navigate inside the BIOS obviously.)

By What process would I use to short it out?Sorry to be such a pain.

A little screwdriver works. Make sure you just touch those two pins.

This is unbelievable, after all this go
uess what the problem was, the brand new power cable they sent me was no good!!!. That was probaly the first thing I should have checked, but honestly it never occured to me. I switched cables and it started right. now I'll put the drives back in and go from there. I keep you abreast , (you'll probably be asked for more help shortly). If not, I want to thank you all for your help.

oh i imagine you can probably handle it from here

Thanks Bob, hope you are right.

You're welcome, durkinjt. Do you mean the main power cable (between the wall outlet and the PC)? That's hard to imagine, as you say. Anyway, I'm glad the mystery's solved and you can have fun installing the OS now.