User has SCSI disk. In secondary IDE channel there is a CD-Rewritable and a Zip drive. Primary IDE connector is vacant. User would like to keep their old internal CD-ROM. Cannot connect it to primary IDE controller because system will try to boot from it. So without changing their SCSI disk to an IDE disk, and without changing their CD-R/W to a SCSI - how can the old CD drive co-exist? What considerations are there in selecting a 3rd IDE controller card? Do some have onboard BIOS and other don't? Are some PCI and others ISA? Are there IRQ and DMA considerations? Do two devices have to share the same IRQ? I don't need a card with other ports as well, like serial, parallel or game. The old CD is a simple ATAPI one from several years ago. Am trying to talk user out of keeping the old CD-ROM. They seem to want it for copying CD-ROMs. Wouldn't copying from the CD-R/W to a temp file on disk and back to CD-R/W be quicker--like copying one floppy to another with one floppy drive? In another workstation, but WITH IDE hard drive and both a CD-ROM and CD-R/W -- why is autorun off when a CD is inserted into old CD-ROM even though registry has autorun enabled? Is is possible to get autorun to work in this setting? Using NT 4.0 SP5.

You can easily use the primary IDE controller and not have a boot device there ! Simply put the cd rom on the primary. And your done. I haven't heard of a 3rd IDE controller, and doubt if there is, might be wrong, been out of the hardware game 6 months now.... But you can easily make do with what you have Cheers

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