Technical Upgrading A Computer Installing A DVD Drive

Installing an Internal DVD ROM Drive

A DVD drive is no longer a luxury. I will explain how to fit this peripheral device. As with fitting an expansion card, fitting a DVD ROM requires you to install the hardware and the software. If you are using a 32 bit Windows operating system, it is shipped with drivers that already work with ATAPI devices. For the sake of keeping it simple, I am only going to talk about IDE drives here on this page. SCSI devices are left for another page. (See Installing A SCSI Card)

As always take the necessary precautions before opening your personal computer. Once you are inside your computer, its time to configure the drive if it needs it. If it is being connected to a primary IDE interface then it most likely doesn't require any configuring and most work first time with their default setting, which is usually slave. If however you are installing it on a secondary IDE channel, set it to master, then it will not conflict with any existing CD-ROM drive.

You will need a free 5.25 inch drive bay for your new drive. Try to mount the drive in the lowest bay if you have a tower case or the highest bay if you have a desktop case. In a tower case, drives have been known to overheat as a result of warm air from hard disks becoming trapped at the top as the heat rises. This would be simply solved if you fit a fan to the hard drive casing. Mounting the drive high in a desktop case, makes it easier to get at the disk caddy and eject button with the caddy open and your keyboard in the way.
With some system cases, it is first necessary to remove the blanking cover that hides the drive the open slot where the new drive will go. Insert the drive into the bay from the front of the case and make sure it doesn't snag anything. Fit all the mounting bolts, but do not tighten them up until all are in place and you are happy with the alignment of your drive. With some cases it may be necessary to temporarily fit the case or fascia, to properly determine the alignment of your new drive. Tighten all the mounting bolts but never over-tighten them.
Attach a spare power plug and the ribbon cable to it. Some connectors are polarised with a notch, but make sure the coloured stripe on the ribbon cable goes to pin 1 on the drive (normally the side next to the power connector). The pins may be numbered. Make sure the ribbon cable is orientated at the board interface also.

Power up the machine. The POST diagnostics may report the new drive. Either way you do not have to make any alterations to your CMOS setup. The drives LED should flash, showing the drive is receiving power. If all went well, you can shutdown your computer and put the case back together. If your system failed to boot properly with some warning, you have failed to configure and install the drive properly.

Once the hardware installation is complete, you have to get the operating system to recognise the new drive and if you are using Microsoft, a drive letter. If you do not boot into DOS only, you can rely on 32 bit Windows using its own drivers. However it sometimes helps to install a real mode DOS driver if it helps the 'Add new Hardware' auto detection wizard look for the device.
When it comes to IDE devices, they will be automatically installed, the same way as would a new IDE hard drive as long as the interface card is properly installed.
Windows 9x uses a 32 bit version of Smartdrive, VCache which may or may not enhance the performance of your ROM devices.

Resolving Conflicts

Installing A Hard Drive