Question : Problem: ITE IDE On New Motherboard

I'm building a new system, Asus P5LD2 Motherboard, Pentium 4  3.2 Ghz,  2 Gb  Crucial DDR2 PC2 5300 RAM,  a 320 Gb Western Digital Caviar SE  IDE Hard Drive,  Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card,  ATI Radeon X1650 Pro PCI Express Video Card,  Ultra 550 Watt X-Connect Power Supply, and my trusty old Plextor 716 Optical Drive.

The motherboard has a 34-1 pin connection for the floppy,  two 40-1 pin connectors for ITE IDE (ITE 8211 IDE), which are Primary EIDE (PRI_EIDE) (red) and Secondary EIDE (SEC_EIDE) (red),   and a ICH7R Primary IDE connector (40-1 pin PRI_IDE).

The manual says the two red  ITE EIDE  connectors can be used for hard drives, but not for ATAPI devices, (which would be an optical drive, right?)  The manual says the other connector, the  ICH7R Primary IDE Connector can be used for a hard drive or an optical drive.

The problem is that the manual says " Make sure that you install the ITE 8211 IDE Driver from the support CD BEFORE using the IDE device attached to any of these connectors."

So if I can't use the two ITE EIDE connections until AFTER I install the drivers, that only leaves me the one connector (the ICH7R Primary IDE) to connect my hard drive. So where would I connect my CD drive????

I'm Confused, Please Help.

                                                                  Gary

Answer : Problem: ITE IDE On New Motherboard

You can always connect 2 device to one IDE channel You'll just have to get the correct cable with 3 connectors. Then you'll have to either set one of the devices via jumper to master and the other to slave, or if the cable supports cable select (the cables with 80 wires support cable select) then set both to CS.