Assy'ed new PC, how to change HDD to primary master?

hi, thanks in advance for any help!

here are the parts:

intel prescott 2.8 64bit (new)
msi 945pl neo (new)
corsair cl4 ddr2 512mb x 2 (new)
cooler master 380w psu (new)
sapphire x300se hm (new... budget ran out so...)
+
quantum fireball u/ata100 30gb (old)
lg cdrw (old)
casing (old, leftover from original nec box)

sorry for the lengthy email but i'll split them into a few parts.

issue 1: due to casing being leftover from previous, the spk/pwsw/hddled/whateverled are clumped in a single piece of plastic mould, instead of separate. it doesn't fit (sequentially) into the new msi mobo; took me quite a while to figure out which ones are the pwsw. however, now the casing speaker & buz aren't connected. i'm guessing what i could do is to take out that plastic clump & redo the wires on my own but i'm hesitant...

issue 2: i'm connecting quantum hdd as master & lg cdrw as slave. jumpers for both have been set. however, bios listed them as 3rd master & 3rd slave. not sure whether this is the problem but i wasn't able to boot up (as in booting up first time after setting up whole computer). i used the windows xp bootup disc but it went into repair/format/install blue screen instead... well so i did reformatted it & installed it, and left it where it was (continuing after afterwork later). if everybody runs ok later, good. if not, does anybody know how to force the ide hdd to be the primary master?

query 1: i can run the memory module singularly even thought its ddr2 right? how bad will the performance be if i don't use dual channel?

query 2: previous psu that came with nec original box was 300w with grey power cable. after a few hours of reassembling whatnot, i realised this power cable was the problem for causing non-bootup! (no post at all.) to complicate the issue, because i couldn't hook up the casing speaker, there was no way even to take cue from mobo bio beep! grrrr... after which i changed to the new black power cable that came with the new psu then it finally worked. question is why would there be difference between power cables??

losc

 

Typically, motherboards come with 2 IDE channels. You should make the hard drive the master on the primary channel, and the CDRW the master on the second channel.

You can run a single stick of DDR2 in single channel mode. I hardly noticed a difference upgrading from single channel to dual.

You mean the cable that runs from the PSU to the wall's outlet, right? If so, I woul suspect that your old cable is just bad. Power cables are fairly universal.

 

the msi 945pl neo comes with only 1 ide channel (but with 4 sata channels which i can't use with existing hdd). so means i have no choice but to put both ide hdd + cdrom on the same ide channel... right? why does the ami bios only recognise them as 3rd master & 3rd slave?

oh ok noted.

yar its strange that the old grey cable worked with the old 300w and not with the new 380w. my wife said next time, always to use cables in black... ;p

losc

 

I've never seen a configuration like this, but couldn't think of any reason why it shouldn't work. I would try setting the CDROM to cable select, and if that didn't work, try setting both to CS.

 

Looking at the manual it says that the bios has this option:
IDE Primary/Secondary/Third Master/Slave
Press <+> or <-> to select the hard disk drive type. The specification of hard di
drive will show up on the right hand according to your selection. Press <Enter> f
the sub-menu of each item:
Can you change in the bios for them to be on the primary? I have no experience with SATA. However, it looks as though you can set which one you want to be the primary. If that's the case you must have your IDE channel set for third. Try changing it to primary and let us know if that works.

 

in 12hours time, i'll be back at my in-laws place to continue the darned pc. i'll keep you posted on the results. you know, now that i think about it, where does it state that primary master *must* be a hdd?

strangely, primary master only allowed floppy, cd/dvd, armd, and lots of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. there's no hdd... question: what is armd??

actually this msi ami bios is strange in that... erhm... there is no bootup sequence in bio feature page!! there're tons of overclocking items but no bootup sequence item? grrrrr..

losc

 

feedback report time.

it worked afterall! i also managed to find bootup sequence which was hidden in 2nd tier options. thanks for the help!

losc