"-" writes:

I'm finding that my DVD drive is very stuttery and basically useless - I'm
wondering if its been set up properly. The CD-ROM drive is master, but the
IDE cable goes into the DVD drive first (ie is closest to the motherboard
IDE controller). If the CD drive is master, is it going to the cd drive to
find the dvd drive to play the dvd first? Surely that's not efficient - but
then again, the cable is closer to the motherboard from the DVD drive...

So, I'm not clear on the way it works speed-wise. My graphics card
incidentally, is a Geforce MX440 and I have 512 ram with a 1800+xp athlon,
so my system should be able to play DVDs fine. Its the same with different
software.

The cable order shouldn't matter provided master and slave are set
correctly.

What may be happening is that your DVD drive is dumbing down to the
IDE bus speed of your CD-ROM drive.

I'd suggest setting the DVD drive as master, and temporarily pulling
the CD-ROM drive off the IDE cable and see if the problem goes away.

If the problem does go away, your solution is likely to
either not use the CD-ROM drive anymore,
replace it with one that supports the same IDE bus speed as
your DVD drive,
or
purchase another IDE card to run the CD-ROM drive on an IDE
interface that is separate from both your hard disks and the
DVD drive.

Best Regards,
--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/