My NEC 3540 A doesnt do anything?

Newbie Forum
#1

I’d be willing to bet its something simple, but I cant solve it.

I just built a new rig. (Athlon 64 X2 3800+ on an Asus A8N SLi deluxe, running dual 7800GT eVGA cards)

I also bought a Sony DVD Rom drive 16x DDU 1615/B2s and the mentioned NEC 3540A. The sony, regardless of how I physically install it, locks up the boot process, so it isnt being used. I have the NEC hooked up as a slave on sec ide cable (hard drives are SATA so primary ide is unused) with my Lite On 48x24x48x CD burner.

The NEC is seen fine, it will even burn DVDs, but it wont see anything. Not CDs, or even the discs it burned.

I was told by a friend that this drive requires SP2 service pack. Which I cant run, due to other issues with work software.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks, Jimbo.

#2

I can’t help you much but this is rubbish. No drive needs SP2. :disagree:

Looks to me like a defective drive.

#3

Are you sure that on the drive you have it jumpered properly (one drive as primary and one as secondary?

#4

Yo-

Strongly suggest making the 3540 the “Master” on the primary IDE channel and the Sony as “Slave” on the same channel - and that the jumpers are set correctly on the back of the drives-

Enter your Bios and make sure that the read at startup is set to the first optical device and that the drives are recognized-

In Control panel - hardware - device manager - IDE drives - be sure that DMA if available is shown - uninstall the drivers on the IDE primary channel - reboot and let XP reinstall fresh drivers-

If you have set the jumpers correctly - then everything should be ok IMO-

Mike

#5

Yes, I’ve tried every combination on the cable. Single drive, cable select mode, master, slave, ect. I even tried it in my other rig, replacing my slave CD burner with this one one jumpered as slave, and still no luck.

I’ve given up on trying to get them to run, and I’m RMA’ing them both back to Newegg for replacements. I’ll just count it as my first ever misshap with them out of about 15 machine builds, and countless upgrade parts.

Thanks for your help, and I’ll be back when I get the new ones. I’m looking forward to learning this whole DVD burning magic.

C-ya, Jimbo.