My computer (a University-used Dell Optiplex GX110) makes me crazy. I was never able to get a hard drive to work on Primary 1. A couple of days ago, I had what I thought was a C drive crash (Primary 0). But I couldn’t get even known good drives to function as a C drive, so I turned it off in the BIOS and am now using only Secondary 0 and 1.
My question is, is it really possible for my IDE Primary Controller to have failed? I’m accustomed to replacing CD-ROM drives every 9 months, but I thought mobo chip failures were rare.
p.s. Any other ideas?
That is certainly possible. It does not happen as frequently as other types of hardware failures but I have seen it before.
Have you swapped IDE cables to rule that out as a cause?
Good thought. I’ll check it out.
The IDE controller is usually part of a single chip which controls a lot of things on the motherboard (like quite often just about everything that is “built in” on the motherboard, serial ports, parallel ports, usb, video, network card, etc). Usually when something goes poof it takes the entire chip out with it, but you can just have one part of the chip fail without damaging the rest of the chip. A faulty hard drive could easily damage one of the IDE channels without breaking the entire chip. It’s also possible that there was a flaw in the silicon in the area where the IDE controller resides on the chip. Static electricity also could have weakened the chip in that area if proper static precautions weren’t followed when the motherboard was installed. There’s lots of possibilities.
Unless you have the skills to solder surface mount parts, you can’t replace the chip. If you verify that it’s not just a bad cable, there’s not much you can do about it other than just turn it off in the BIOS and use the other IDE port as you’ve done.
I’m wondering why you are replacing CD-Rom drives every 9 months. I’ve had two CD-Roms fail in a total of about 30 computer in the past fifteen years. I don’t go through them at anywhere near the rate you do.
Either the IDE failed, the cable is bad, or the power connector is bad. I see more power connectors go bad than the other problems. The connectors loosen and you have intermittent power.
Maybe because I keep replacing them with $30 no-name things built in Malaysia by children.
Heh, the $30 ones are the expensive ones for non DVD.