Slim CD drive with idefix97.....atapi device appears not to be working

[Thomas]

but I cant put the cdrom on as the slave on channel 1 as I dont have a 2.5>3.5 adapter handy

The 4-way adapter should have two connectors for channel 1, one 2.5" and one 3.5". You can connect the master to the 2.5" connector and the slave to the 3.5" connector. Just make sure that channel 1 does not have two masters or two slaves.

I tried using the big cdrom but it didnt seem that the brick psu had enough power as nothing booted up.

Then IMHO the problem with the slimline CD-ROM is a power issue, too. You should try to run the CD-ROM without the HDD connected and powered (run the drivers from floppy disk). If it then works, it is a power problem.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

I detached the hard drive, booted from floppy with the cdrom on channel 1 and when scanning through atapi.device it couldnt find anything.

I think this is definately a master/slave problem.

I don't think so. If the CD-ROM is the only drive, then it should be recognised no matter if it is master or slave.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

Its odd that it shows up with the HD attached...

I wouldn't call it showing up if it tells you your cabling is bad.