Ok last night I installed an internal ZIP drive in my pc in place of the external one, but the problem was even with the newest drivers it wasnt recognized, that is it wasnt picked up as new hardware. So I tried a few things and asked a certain tech guru a few questions, but I think I have found the problem. Im pretty sure it needs to be set as a slave drive, as it is presentlty a master. But the thing is you need jumpers for this, and I dont seem to have any, So can you use anything for jumpers? Does anyone have any recommendations? Or do you have to just buy some.

Thanks
Ross

Hmm... a toughy indeed. I usualyl have spares everywhere. (ive gone through 3 mainboards, i usuay salvage all the 5 jumpers on them.)

HOWEVER! If its new from the shop, it should have a jumper. if not, then go down to your nearest puter shop and see if they can sell you a couple. its pretty cheap as long as their 'nice' puter peopple.

Otherwise try your friends, maybe they have spares. The reason why is that theirs no substitue for a jumper clip, unless you want to experiment with some copper wire, or aliminium, or maybe lead O_o... or maybe a rubber band? O_O (just kidding, none of those methods will be good, so your going to need the jumper)

Hope it works mate, or its my ass on the table LOL!

Marikai

lol, well I have 4 computers sitting here, but none of them have any spare ones. Which sucks. I suppose I could just go to a computer shop, although it will probably be a week, but no biggie, unless anyone else knows anything?

wait, several things first...

1) jumpers are cheap, like five cents a piece or something.

2) its probably not jumpers causing the problem.

3) is the drive on the same ISB Cable (the long thin cable with two pluggy things on it) as the hard drive? okay, now is the drive plugged into the plug on the end of the chord, or the plug in the middle of the chord? why is this important? well, if its set on master, and you have it plugged into the middle plug, it wont work, because that middle plug is for the slave drive. if you have it on a different ISB Cable than your hardrive, try switching its position on the ISB Cable (and temporarily leaving off other things from that cable). fire up the computer and see if it works.

5) leaving other devices unplugged, take a jumper from an unplugged CD Drive and use it to set the jumper settings (which can be found online on the specs sheet for your device) see if that works. set all your jumpers appropriately based on where they are on the ISB wire (end plug = master, middle plug = slave) and retry firing up the computer.

if that doesnt work, then its not the jumper. how old is your computer and when you bought the drive did it come with a cd? small companies drivers are often not included with windows. Also, does the drive work without installing the driver? have you tried just plugging something in to see how it goes? finally, and i know this sounds dumb but computer problems are sometimes simple: when you plugged in your drive, did you remember to plug in the power cord as well as the ISB Cable? If your drive isnt getting power the computer will not recognize it.

Hmmm... a couple of things.

First, not only does this drive have to be a slave, but the other one has to be a master. Make sure both are jumpered properly; there are usually some indicator marks near the jumper area.

Second, I've not added a ZIP drive, so I'm not familiar with the connections. However, on the various hard drives and CD-xxxx drives I've added, there's always been a spot to jumper them in the back, by the power cord. And conveniently, they have all shipped with a jumper connector! It's usually in an un-jumpered state, but it's been there.

Third, I know that IDE cables at one point did determine what was the master and slave on a particular connection, but I'm under the impression that that habit has gone by the wayside, and BIOS just uses the jumper settings. I could certainly be wrong, though, and there's nothing wrong with deciding to put the master on one connector and the slave on the other.

You might also try removing the other drive from the cable, just to make sure that the ZIP drive works.

Good luck.

nope, the jumper settings have to agree with the IDE cable reading (try reversing your hard drives sometime and see if it fires up, it'll tell you that the master settings are incorrect).

also, there is no position for the jumper to be in a "non jumpered" setting. The connection it ships in is generally the "auto detect" setting, which should allow you to plug it into any IDE cable position and have function... the thing that baffles me is the fact that it doesnt work with no jumper, because no jumper should also normally function as auto-detect.

computer is brand new, just adding a zip for convenience. I dont know if it works without the driver, but if you mean on the computer Im putting it in, then no, with or without the driver it wont work. yes, the power is plugged in and the light comes on when I put a disk in, so not that.

I did a little searching on Cable-Select setting, which is what lets the cable determine who's the master and who's the slave. I found a nice explanation here.

Basically, to make cable select work, you need a special kind of cable, and most commercial ones out there aren't that kind. So the odds of finding a Cable-select environment on a new PC are pretty slim.

I'll go back to making sure that both drives are jumpered properly -- one as a master, and the other as a slave. The default setting for a drive is not to be jumpered as a master, so if you haven't fixed that, it won't work.

Ermmm... you *do* have the IDE cable plugged into the back of it as well, right?

You could borrow a jumper from another drive, if one of the other drives (for example cd drive) defaults to cabel select without jumpers you could take the jumper off that and put it on the zip drive, or you could be fairly dodgey and ues some kind of fine wire as a temporary soloution, such as fuse wire, even if it did make a bad connection it should't cause any damage.
But i suggest just waiting and continuing to use your external drive for now and later buying some jumpers.

course I do! [img]smile.gif[/img]

course I do! [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>[/QUOTE]Just asking :D

Never hurts to rule out the obvious. I've been bitten in the past by not realizing I'd loosened the IDE cable enough to be considered unplugged...

course I do! [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>[/QUOTE]Just asking :D

Never hurts to rule out the obvious. I've been bitten in the past by not realizing I'd loosened the IDE cable enough to be considered unplugged... </font>[/QUOTE]actually, he's quite right. computer help desks report that sixty percent of computer problems are user errors such as not plugged in, not turning on the power, not using properly. I remember one report where an old guy called in to report that his computers cup holder had broken and he wanted a new one since it was still under warranty. cup holder you ask? yes, he was using his DVD/CD-R drive as a cup holder and the tray snapped off under the weight.

Ok update. It was actually set as slave without any jumpers. But I managed to get a hold of some jumpers through another ZIP drive and set it to master. Nothing happened though! There are also settings for master A and Slave A or something like that, should I try that?

Just tried with it set to Master A, still no joy, running out of options for jumpering here. Only Slave A (although the IDE cable is coming straight off of the motherboard so shouldn't it be a master?) and theres also that Cable select, but you need to purchase cables for that (thanks for the link Bungleau)

So any other good ideas?

remember the IDE cable is connected straight to the motherboard, that should tell you something.

Im starting to think its a dead drive, you should get some sign of life if you plug a drive into a IDE channel set as master and with nothing else on the same channel.

try it with cable select

i dont think the jumper is the problem, and if the drive lights up when you put something in, im not sure its a dead drive either... let me think on it.

Okay, back to basics:

1. How many devices are on this cable?

2. What are they?

3. Where are they plugged in?

4. How are they all jumpered?

Lights indicate that power is working, which is good. They don't indicate anything about connection.

Ermmmm... you did plug the IDE cable in correctly, didn't you? Red stripe towards power? I think they make it impossible to put 'em in backwards these days, but ya never know...

Next option I've got is to take something from the other IDE cable and swap it over to this one. It may have to be rejumpered to be a master, but see what's going on. And then try the ZIP drive on the other cable.

Next step is to sacrifice a Macintosh, so you may need to get ready for that one... :D

it is working, cos it came out of another computer.

1.only the ZIP, the IDE cable goes straight to the mobo
2. none
3.look above
4.doesnt apply

If it's the only thing on the cable, it should either be jumpered as a master or left unjumpered. The docs should tell, but in no case should it be a slave.

On the off-change that you might have a cable-select cable, have you tried it in both connectors?

Next option, as I said, would be to swap something else in to make sure the cable is working fine.

You might also unplug the cable (from the mobo and the drive) and plug it back in. I've been nailed by loose connections before.

You might also need to check the BIOS and make sure the second IDE channel hasn't been disabled or something.

I think the channel might be disabled because in the Iomega website it says to do this so that windows will recognize it, but I tried it with it enabled I think and no change, Il try again though. Il also try the other suggestions. I dont know if its cable select, how would I know?

Ok turns out there were two different IDE cables on the same thing from the mobo. Well I knew that anyway really, but one wouldnt stretch far enough so didnt bother to try it out. But just discovered that in fairly small writing on the underside it says (the one that was in before) HD1 and the one which is in now says ZIP and HD2. Although I have now corrected the IDE cable it is still not recognized yet, although Il fiddle with a few things and see what happens, Il keep you posted.

Worse case scenario, check your BIOS settings. When I put my internal in, that is what I had to do to get it to be recognized.

Good Luck.

Ok its still not working, tried with heaps of different jumperings. Went into the BIOS and looked for the second IDE drive being disabled. Didnt see any sign of it. I did notice a thing called "OS install" or "OS install mode" That was switched to off. Dunno if that has anything to do with it?

DONT PLAY WITH YOUR BIOS!!!

if you dont know what youre doing you can permanently screw your motherboard (ie, you have to buy a new motherboard).

If it comes down to a bios problem (which is extremely dubious) go to a qualified computer tech.

have you tried windowsupdate.microsoft.com to look for microsoft drivers that may have been made? its worth a try.

dont worry man, I have some knowledge of the BIOS (for OC'ing purposes etc.) I dont intend to "play" with it anyway. Il try the windows update thing but Im not convinced itl do anything. Thanks anyway.

Have you tried plugging a known good drive into the cable to see if it is recognizied? It could be a problem with IDE slot on the motherboard.

Have you tried testing the Zip drive in another PC, again using an IDE bus that you know works?

This will help to isolate the problem.

Il try another IDE cable and tell you what happens. I know that it works though, as it used to be in another PC until a couple of days ago.

YES!!!! got it fixed. The computer does actually have cable select, so I tried putting it in both the free IDE ports (the middle one and the top one) and still no joy. So, after trying everything I could think of I decided that I was pissed of enough to justify a call to tech support. Now after about 20minutes onto them (damn foreigners, no offense intended to anyone out there, but you know what its like when you get someone who cant understand you properly) This is what I was told, and did, AND IT WORKED! I left it in the top IDE connection since that is the main one since it isnt used because I have SATA HDDs, and went into BIOS, I then pressed Alt+E and then Alt+F alternately 5 times and rebooted, then everything worked, it was installed without me having to do anything, and was in the device manager and had a letter name etc.

So my question out of all of this is: what the hell does Alt+E and Alt+F alternately for 5 times do? (Well I suppose I know what it did on this occasion but what does it do in general, if you get my drift :D )

Oh and btw thanks for all the suggestions etc.