I have installed a 24max Acer cd rom drive on a much older computer and it has possibly been connected to a Soundblaster card as the previous one was and was a Creative Soundblaster model. A ISP16/Mad16/Moazard configuarable module works for it when trying to install linux but when it comes time to choose my drive type non match or work. I can't even find a driver for it for plain DOS. Any help would be much appreciated! Kat

Have you tried connecting it to one of the IDE channels on the motherboard?

Is it detected by the BIOS when you first boot?

Thanks for getting back, I was starting to wonder if anyone would. Well the light comes on lots of times during startup but the BIOS doesn't find it, it doesn't even have an option to add a cd rom drive as far as I can tell, it's like an 1993 one. As far as connecting it a IDE channel on the motherboard I'm hopeless with hardware and have no idea how to do it or even if it has any because of how old the model is. Can anyone give me a idea or lead me to a site that explains this cos the last thing I want to do is stuff it up big time! Kat

How do I do that with the motherboard or can you direct me to a website explaining and also the BIOS doesn't show the cd rom but the lights on it work and it opens so it's at least working itself I pressume. Thanks everyone for getting back. Kat

Well if the light comes on and you can open the tray then at least it's getting power. How about taking the case off your PC? You must have done that in the first place to put the drive in. Have a look round and you'll see some ribbon cables (thin, wide and usually grey). There should be a narrower one connecting your floppy drive and either one or two more connected to your hard drive. Each cable can support two devices. If you find a cable with nothing on it, just plug in your CD drive. If you have to add it to a cable with something already attached, you may need to change a jumper setting. On each cable you can have a master and a slave. Look on the back of the drive and you will see some little pins and a jumper. You should be able to set the jumper to MA (master), SL (slave) or CS (Cable Select). If you already have a hard drive attached it is probably set to master so move the jumper on the CD drive to the slave position and then plug it in. If all goes well (and your BIOS is set to automatically find devices on boot) it should be detected when you turn your PC on. If it isn't detected on startup it is very unlikely that ANY operating system will be able to see it.