At the moment I have a single IDE port and there is a two IDE cable connected to the current HDD and the CD-ROM thing. I want to run two HDDs and the 120gig thing I have is IDE only. The MOBO does have an FDD port next to the IDE port, but I don't know what that is for.

Therefore I think I need a THREE IDE port cable? One going into the MOBO and three for the CD ROM and 2 x HDD?

Oh, would also like an adaptor from DVI graphics to VGA

Edit: Forget the adaptor Just got one off Ebay dirt cheap

Can't be done. Each IDE channel can only have two devices, master/slave. You need a better motherboard, or an old IDE PCI add-in card. Sorry!

The MOBO does have an FDD port next to the IDE port, but I don't know what that is for.

Floppy disk.

The mobo will usually have two IDE sockets (supporting 4 devices) or an IDE socket (supporting 2 devices) and some SATA ports (1 device per port).

Are you sure you don't have two IDE sockets?

Looks like I have 4 SATA ports on this thing, but neither HDD is SATA, and I'm not convinced the DVD drive has SATA on it.... ???

Definitely only one IDE. I am curious what might have been in the PCI slot that hasn't got a blank over it.... Wonder what this thing could be missing. Has a DVI graphics output and all networking/sound appears to be onboard the mobo.

Possibly an old-school dial up modem missing? Doesn't look like your DVD drive has SATA, SATA power and data would tend to be on the left of your photo, yours looks like a generic IDE ribbon cable and presumably an older-style 4 pin Molex power connector off to the right of your photo

Cheapest way of getting up and running would probably be buy a SATA optical drive (mine cost about £12 when I built my new PC) and then you can plug your two hard drives in and keep your data without arsing around transferring it to/from various other drives.

Get one of these http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/IDE-133-100-HDD-SERIAL-SATA-CONVERTER-ADAPTER-UK-/380347155346?pt=UK_Computing_CablesConnectors_RL&hash=item588e750392

It allows one of your IDE devices to be connected to a SATA port.

Jesus christ jason.. how do you always end up with pikey computers!!

IDE hasnt really been in use for a good few years now lol...

Probably the same way I do, family members who can't be bothered to fix it anymore and will happily spend on a replacement. Just picked up an "old" Advent laptop off my dad, dual core 1.46GHz Pentium, 2Gb of RAM, and pretty light with a 12.1" screen. Only problem being it got knocked off a table so there's a few dead pixels, the worst part being a circle of about an inch in the bottom right hand corner. He would rather just spend a few hundred quid on a new one than a hundred to repair the screen and still be left with an old laptop. No good as a laptop anymore but perfect for use at work just sitting running Linux/BSD and can act as off-site backup etc for my VPS. No matter how old other people's junk is, I can usually put it to some kind of good use

Yeah, this was a hand me down, can't be bothered with it anymore type of thing. Didn't cost me anything but would like to get it running for personal sense of achievement

I've a SATA dvd drive in the classifiedes somewhere for the cost of postage.

you would be better off changing to sata hdd's as it will be quicker

Given the age of the machine I would say the upgrade from IDE to SATA would be barely noticable at best, and exactly the same at worst. The theoretical throughput of SATA is higher (150Mb/s for the original SATA 1 and 300Mb/s for SATA 2, vs a max of 133Mb/s for the fastest IDE devices) but virtually no magnetic hard drives can even come close to saturating an IDE link anyway. There might be a small performance advantage because you can get things like Native Command Queueing on SATA disks so that they use the available bandwidth more efficiently, but it's not going to be a night and day difference at all.

SSDs are another story but they're not really available in IDE anyway and it's probably not worth buying an SSD for such an old machine.

Did you get sorted with this J?

Would seem that if the board has some SATA connections on it, you'd be best off with an SATA>IDE adaptor, like the one linked to earlier in the thread.

On a cost-to-benefit ratio, this would be the way to go really :yes:

I will probably go SATA-IDE eventually. Just want to get it running. Have the VGA adaptor now. Just hunting around now for a screen, mouse & keyboard as ideally want it to be a separate bespoke setup from my own PC I have.

PS/2 keyboards and mice I have, if you're in need

Also have a 17" TFT spare, if you want something separate. Drop me a PM if you like.

Bearing in mind you can pick up a SATA DVD writer for less than the cost of a SATA to IDE adapter, I'd suggest it would be cheaper to junk the IDE CD and go SATA for it.

It's only going to be SATA 1 anyway, which IMHO is pretty useless for HDDs anyway when compared to SATA2.

As mentioned above, only 1 ide socket usually means a Sata board, so splash out for a sata dvd player and attach both ide HDDs to the ide cable. Make sure you set one of the HDDs to "Slave" or you will have problems.

Well, after getting hold of a reasonable 19" flat screen, I've managed to get this machine booted up. Using an old XP CD as a boot disc, it came up with this on the desktop. I lol'd

Spec as far as I can tell is:

Pentium 4 CPU @ 3 ghz

1Gb RAM

160gb HDD (still working on getting in the additional 120gb - may not bother...)

and the computer is registered to "Bugs Bunny"

Very nice J!

Nice 'custom' theme going on too; flash