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| Thread ID: 41354 | 2004-01-08 06:54:00 | Interesting Technical Question | Chemical Ali (118) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 206071 | 2004-01-08 06:54:00 | Hi I am at present looking at constructing a Home Theatre PC to add to my home theatre system. Looking at using it to play MP3s thru stereo and JPEGs/DVDs/MPEGs etc via TV. Have fixed my sights on a black desktop case that has only 1 x 5.25" external bay and 2 x 3.25" bays (internal/external. In order to snazz the thing up I'm considering placing an LCD style display such as these examples (www.pccasegear.com) into the 5.25" drive bay and connecting an external CDRW/DVD combo drive via a USB2 port on an add on PCI SCSI card as my chosen motherboard doesn't have USB2 ports on it. The 2 x 3.25" bays would have a floppy drive and hard drive as normal. Here are my questions: 1: Will system boot up okay? -- I'm presuming that it will bring up a warning message at the boot up/splash screen re: no optical drive on secondary IDE channel but will it give the option to press F1 to continue booting up? 2: Will system then detect the external combo drive via the USB2 add-on card okay? 3: Can I then use this drive to play MP3s, games etc as I normally would any internal optical drive? 4: Regarding installation of the Windows XP O/S -- I'm presuming that I'll need to have an internal CD-Rom drive fitted at that point to install Windows as install setup won't detect the Windows XP Installation disc sitting in the externally connected drive will it? Await your responses with interest. Many Thanks C. Ali |
Chemical Ali (118) | ||
| 206072 | 2004-01-08 08:09:00 | The ability to detect the USB drive will be entirely dependent on your motherboard/BIOS combo. "I'm presuming that it will bring up a warning message at the boot up/splash screen re: no optical drive on secondary IDE channel " Why? If there is none, it will know that. Why would it think it had one, and then say it didn't? - Sorry, I am lost here. My advice: A $97 Mustek DVD player A $355 XBox Plays games, DVDs, JPGs, VCDs, CDs, remote controls included (plus 2 games)... all for $452 |
godfather (25) | ||
| 206073 | 2004-01-08 08:35:00 | I was just wandering as I know that it would bring up such a message if there was no hard drive on the primary IDE channel so wondered if same for an optical device on an IDE channel. Re: X-box -- would then have to buy games, can't surf net (unless I port it) -- limited graphics resolution ... Want a system that can play all media -- MP3/MPEG/JPEG/DivX/DVD/DVD-Audio etc and be a web surfer. |
Chemical Ali (118) | ||
| 206074 | 2004-01-08 08:41:00 | The PC doesn't need any devices on the secondary IDE channel. In fact many PCs never even have a Secondary IDE cable fitted, just use Master and Slave on the Primary Channel. XP on my Motherboard will happily boot from a Slave HDD on the primary channel, no errors. |
godfather (25) | ||
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