I got a benq 1620 and tried to install it. I am new to burners. so bear with me.
I have a cdrom on top 5.25 inch bay and i installed the benq 1620 on bottom 5.25 inch bay.
i plugged all the jumpers. and started the computer and it won't start.
so i took out the benq 1620 cables - the power and the the other. and the computer works.
on back of benq 1620 there is a slave master something - jumper setting.
there is a black plastic that jumper set at master.
i dont have any clue how to set it to slave.
can anyone help me please.
morever i have a dell computer and the benq came with 4 screws and i could only put 3 screws because if i put the 4th screw the benq 1620 burner wont go inside and gets stuck 1/4th way. do i need to put the 4th screw?

What is your Dell model? I prefer to put the BenQ in master but from your questions, this is going to be hard, I will try to give an easy instruction by setting the BenQ as slave and live the CDROM as master.

1. Make your BenQ as slave: take out the jumper from the back of BenQ (from master) and put it in the slave pin.
2. Put the BenQ in the second (bottom) bay.
3. Notice that the gray thin IDE cable that plugged to your CDROM has the black color pins. In the same IDE cable it should have the grey pins. Put the gray pins into BenQ.
4. Find an extra power cable and plug it in the BenQ.
5. Don't worry about the screws, 3 is enough.

Should work now. Let us know how it goes.

i did that and it is working now. but i did it before what you wrote and did by myself althought at times it got frustrating.
now my benq 1620 has come with b7h9 firmware.
is this firmware good enough to burn dvd movies?
also i my cdrom would not come out as one screw attaching it to hard drive is acting stuborn and refuses to cooperate. so i have no idea what my cdrom is on - whether master or slave or cable select?
i thought dell 4600 pentium 2.8 mhz comes with cable select for cdrom?
do you know?
now what software do i need to have to make backup copies of dvd movies i have? anything good?
i read that benq says to have drive in some mode to make it read faster? how do i do that?

i bought this computer from a friend and its 3.00 ghz pentium 4. but there is no sound. i got speakers for it yesterday. now there is no sound. none. i cant play a cd. and i have no clue which program to use to play a cd.
which icon on the back of this computer has sound connection? i have no idea where to connect these speakers to.

Dell's speakere connections are color coded match the color of the connection on the back of the computer to the color on your speaker wires.

Hi Jimmy

i got it. my benq drive is reading at 1.56x??????? what is going on here? how can I set up reading speed on my benq?

G_Ivan Awfulitch > Is that Jimmy? Not another Jimmy

what kind of disk is it reading? and does it do this with all disks or is this something that just started after you adjusted the jumpers?

if it just started then more than likely after your adjustments your drive is may be operating in PIO mode instead of DMA you can check in device manager under ATAPI\IDE controlers. under the advanced tab it will show what mode it is operating in.

one reason for this change may be your adjusments. by default dell uses cable select on it's drive setups instead of master and slave. if you have set your new BenQ to master while any other device on the same IDE cable is set to Cable select this could cause problems.

yeah i set the benq to slave and i can't get the oher drive out and see what it is on - cable select or master.
the drive is working.
before i had benq at master and the operating syste m wont even work.
now benq is at slave.
are you saying i should set benq as cable select? if the dell has the other drive at cable select?
is there a way to know what the other drive is at - master or cable select? without taking it out from computer?
btw i am using benq with the firmware it came with b7h9 - does that make a difference in its reading speed of 1.56x?
all dma are enabled.

Me too...