two dvd writers on same ide channel?

[chilli]

I have added a second dvd writer to the secondary ide channel, the master is a pioneer 108 running in dma mode 4 and added an nec 3550a to slave and it shows in device manager running in dma mode 2. Is this correct or should both be in dma mode 4. My dvdrom drive the nec replaced was also a slave to the pioneer 108 and it was in dma mode 2.

Thanks

[xzarkad]

Hi,

this totally depends one you motherboard and chipset. Some motherboards automatically set secondaray slaves even back to pio mode. If you have a manual of your mainboard then the answer of what a secondary channel can support should be in there.

Regards,

[TJohns]

Just disconnect the primary drive & run it by itself to see what it does in a "best-case" scenario. I thought that the (maximum) DMA mode was also an individual drive property - sorta like ATA100 or ATA133 IDE hard drive speeds.

Trev

[chilli]

Just disconnect the primary drive & run it by itself to see what it does in a "best-case" scenario. I thought that the (maximum) DMA mode was also an individual drive property - sorta like ATA100 or ATA133 IDE hard drive speeds.

Trev

Thanks for the reply, I have an Aopen ak89 max motherboard and will dig out the manual to see what it says plus will disconnect the Pioneer to see what dma mode it puts the nec in when rebooting. Will post the results.

Thanks

[bevills1]

It depends on drives involved. Some have instructions to set as master or set as slave, and drives may not operate normally if not set per instructions. It shouldn't matter which is master or slave if instructions don't specify those settings.

[chilli]

After disconnecting the Pioneer and rebooting with the nec alone it came up as dma mode 2. I did some research and found out the nec is ultraDMA 33 and the Pioneer is ultraDMA 33 and 66 compatable, I thought that because they were both high speed writers that they both would support ultraDMA 66 and I was wrong. Thanks for the replies and help.