IDE Controller Bad????

Has anyone ever seen 1/2 of a IDE Controller Board bad??? I'm looking at an "Acer" PC for a friend...I formatted the HD and now it doesn't see the CD-Rom (CD might of not worked before the Format, don't know), I have tried several "Boot Disk" and I keep getting the following error "Unable to detect ATAPI CD-Rom Drive" "ATAPI IDE CD-Rom device drivers not loaded "...So I tried my "Boot Disk" on another 95 machine and they worked great...So I brought that CD-Rom and cable home to try on this "Acer" and I'm getting the same errors....But the HD is on the "Primary" side and I can do a DIR on the HD and see the Command.com file and the CD is on the "Secondary" side....That's why it looks like the secondary side is bad....Can this be?????
Thanks for all your Help
Rick A.

 

Yes, I've experienced this before on an older Asus board. I've also seen serial port interfaces go and fan headers burn out on motherboards. First, check in your bios setup that both IDE channels are enabled. And, if yes - you might have a bad secondary controller. To confirm this, put the HDD on the secondary and see what happens. Note: if push comes to shove, you can run both the HDD and the CDRom on the primary, even though this may compromise overall performance.

 

Well, I found the problem....The secondary side of the IDE Card was bad, hooked the HD and CD to the Primary side and it worked Great...........Thanks for youe Help.....

 

Have you checked to be sure the Secondary IDE cintroller is turned on in the BIOS?

 

Rick A.

Doesn't that make the cable bad?

You might give this a shot. In Device Manager, remove the secondary IDE controller and reboot. It will be rebuilt and might work.