wierd...

One of the worst things you can do is have a optical drive on the same ide cable as a hdd. for one it makes the hdd slower cause there is a slow device on the chain. i would hold the cuda button for 20-30 seconds . and if that dont help try a new install of your OS i would try and find a ultra ATA/133 80 wire 2 device cable. If you have 2 hdd's try keeping them on the same IDE cable and for the optical drives i would keep them off the hdd cable and put them on a IDE cable by there self.

let me clarify some things:

1. I Have NO CUDA button. all I have are a power and reset pushbutton on the mainboard, between the PRAM batt, and the ZIF socket. At least I dont think I do. I may be wrong. somebody want to double check my math?

2. I am NOT trying to hook an HDD in the same chain as the ODD. (though I have done it before to transfer some files, and it's worked OK, but it was only temporary). what I have is my internal ZIP 100 hooked to the slave position, and the ODD in the bay above in master. they are connected by a 24" 80 wire cable strung from the mobo plug, under the mobo, under the riser under the 3rd HDD bay, up the side, and plugs hung in thier respective locations. cable is held in place by lots of strips of srapping tape.

3. the new HDD is hooked to the other built in IDE channel by the factory 80 wire 6" or so cable. it is the only device on that chain, as it has only one plug to the mobo, and one plug to the HDD.

also note: I have 2 other HDDs in the other 2 bays. neither are powered up, but can be at a moments notice. one is the stock 10gb with OS 9.2.2 on it, in case something goes wrong with the 120gb (doubt it, but in case it does, it has a nice 5 year warrenty). the other has a backup of all my files on it, and is a 13.6gb IBM deskstar. it's larger, younger twin, a 15gb of same make died at an early age, and will be going to the scrap yard tommarow (along with 2 boxes of PC parts and my dad's old Kayak (stripped to the bone)).

another reason I dont have the other HDDs powered up is because the maxtor sounds like a wind tunnel, and the Seagate is whisper quiet, something you value when it's 2:30 in the morning and meople are sleeping in the next room, and the only soung eminating from the system is the keyboard clicking as I type this.

-digital

1 - Sounds like an ID conflict to me, check the jumper settings on the optical and Zip.

2 - that sounds like a corrupted disk, did you try it on any other system? If no-go, re-initialize if possible, OW run a disk repair util.

dan k

ah ha, jumpers!!

the ZIP has 6 settings:

Master
Slave
Cable Select
Master A
Slave A
Cable Select A.

right now, it is either slave or slave A, which ever setting has no jumpers. let me check...

See Mac PRAM, NVRAM, CUDA/PMU & Battery Tutorial
http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/pram.html

Cheers, Tom
Mac Troubleshooting, Maintenance & Tips
http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/MacTroubleshoot.html

that button just restarts the computer. it does the same thing as the button on the front panel.

oh, and about the jumpers, so far I have tryed these with no avail:

Slave A (what it was set to. turns out Slave (not Slave A) is the one with no jumpers.)
Slave
Cable Select

I am going to try CS A when I find another jumper. (I have a whole pill bottle of them around here somewhere.)

oh, as for the Jump Drive, I copied over as much stuff as I could on my mom's Toshiba laptop. turns out, some files were corrupted. I am going to plug it in in a bit. I already formatted it, and put most of the stuff back on.

-digital

UPDATE:

ok, I was getting a little curious if it was the HDD causing the problem, because when the system boots, it first has a grey screen, then it flashes white for a second (if it finds a system folder, if it doesnt, then the folder with flashing ? appears), then the screen turns grey with the mouse pointer. this is where it was hanging. when it wasnt, right after that, it would access the HDD (watching the little LED) that's what led me to believe it was the HDD conflicting, because when the system hung, the LED wouldnt come on. (usually I can tell when the HDD is being accesed, but this one is so quiet, I cant, so i watch the light.). I took it out, and noticed the jumper on it (one of those bastardized half sized ones that are nearly impossible to get out) was set to the cable select possition. SO, I removed it, and moved it over to the Master=on Slave=off position.

I set the ZIP to the Slave A, it still hung. BUT, when I set it to the slave setting (no jumper), it boots!!

now comes a new problem. it boots, but the ZIP isnt even detected. And the CD/RW-DVD-ROM is coming up as a DVD-R, but it's not playing the DVD in there. it is working fine with CDs.

later. -digital

Could it be a bad Zip Drive?
Maybe you should try making the Zip master and the Optical Drive slave.

well, it's a 3rd party drive. it's made by NEC, but the vendor (according to ASP) is iomega.

also, I reset the nvram, and now the thumbdrive is coming up, but it appears TWICE. I have to trash both to eject it properly.

that is exactly what happened when I had my mom's USB floppy drive plugged in and a disk is inserted.

also, the appilication problem is back and worse than ever. it's annoying as hell, and I would like to get a fix.

you know what, the hell with it. until I get one of those ZIP drives that are actually FOR this machine, I may as well as put the stock DVD drive in. I wont be doing any CD burning until I can get a (legal) copy of Toast Titanium 5, and/or tiger. At least the original DVD drive works flawlessly with the ZIP drive.

later. -digital

You're not pushing that button with the machine powered on, are you? That's a bad idea.

I just use it in emergencys when I need to restart the machine, and cmd-ctrl-pwr, or the front button dont respond. if it's hurting it. I will stop.

-digital

I can scarcely imagine a configuration where pressing the CUDA switch is more convenient than pulling the plug from the back of the machine. Yes, it is bad for the computer. It can lead to doom and general unpleasantness.

I have done this a few times, but I try to avoid it. I want to know what I may have done.

I have no personal experience, but I suppose there is a possibility of corrupting the power manager.

alright, the stock DVD drive is back in, and it and the ZIP drive are working harmoniously. I updated the driver from Iomega's website, and unlike before, it works. (last time, I had to rool back the driver, because it would cause the system to crash/freeze. So, foreget about problem# 1 for now.

problem #2 is fixed. I formatted my flash stick on here, and it works fine. of course, I backed up all my files. however, this has caused a new problem with any USB volumes (flash stick, card reader (so far have only tryed 512mb SD card), and USB floppy drive): the disk mounts TWICE. what is going on? I have to eject it twice, copy/move the same file twice, format it twice, etc. or else the changes wont work.

problem number 3 is still here, and is most annoying. I REALLY want this to stop NOW. it's getting on my last nerve.

-digital

it almost sounds like you partitioned the USB drive some how

I dont know, but it happens with every USB based mass storage device I plug in. I tryed a CF card I had laying around, and it did it to that, and Sd card, my thumb drive, and the disk in the floppy drive.

also, it turns out the Samsung SM-308B is a proper CD-RW, according to Adaptec Toast 4.1.2, which I was able to find. However, it WILL NOT play DVDs, even with the patched version of Apple DVD player 2.7. it also wont burn CDs with the Apple Disc Burner. so, here is what I am going to do:

the stcok DVD drive stays, so I can play movies and whatnot. I am going to get an external 5.25" case with USB connection, and use that. the bad part, is that all the cases I have looked at so far, use an external power adapter (fortunantly not one of those brick style, one like a laptop.) I would rather pull power from the UDB port. I came across this nice one on geeks.com, and it has BOTH USB and Firewire. it uses the 6 pin plug on the back of the case, so why cant it pull power from the firewire port? It also has a nice passthrough firewire port, which is nice because I was going to invest in an isight, and that, plus my iPod, makes 3 FW devices, and I only have 2 ports (I know there are hubs, but I really dont want to invest in one of those).

-digital