what the hell is a jumper? i hope my drive doesn't jump, might get hurt! it's a long way down! anyway, on the real, what the hell is a jumper?

 

Tells the board if it's the Master or the Slave drive......... Wonder who thought of those terms...........

Difference is if you have one or two drives on the same cable. This is assuming it's a IDE drive and not a SCSI drive.......

The hard drive can be one of them, but if it's the boot drive, it can only be on the primary master setting..... Then a CD could be on the primary slave setting.... Or, the CD could be a secondary master or slave...... Go figure......

Confused yet??

If you've never seen the inside of a computer before, it might be best to take it in someplace or have a neighbor kid look at it....

A regular CD rom drive will run about $30, but a writable one will cost a bit more. If you don't burn disks, then just get a regular one......

Unless you got the extended warranty from Dell, the standard one is only good for a year.

Good luck!

 

yeah man that master/slave stuff is racist....lets get cochran on the case

In all that explanation you failed to say that a jumper is the lil black or white thing on all the pins, next to the ide cable on the back of a drive. Looks something like this (yeah its a hard drive but ull get the point):

 

DOH.............

The pic is a nice touch too!!

 

well i as confused as i am gonna get. it is a rewriteable drive i know that part for sure. as far as any thing else, you guys are killing me. but like i said, it reads and plays, just won't open via the button, when the tray is out, the button works to pull the tray back in, but it won't open the bastard up! anyway. i will go get another one, how much do the re-writes go for? thanks for the help guys, Willie, at least i think that's my screen name!!

 

as stated previously about 30 bux will get ur a drive from ur local electronics store bestbuy,officemax,cirtcuit city etc.. I think places like target and walmart sell them now.

 

The price I quoted was for a basic CDRW drive (CD re-writable) If you want a DVD-CD rewritable, they are about $100 to $130 for name brand.

And, the last several drives I have swapped out did not need to have any jumpers changed. If you have a stock PC from Dell, HP or any other name brand, you should be able to just pug it in.

You won't hurt anything if the jumpers aren't set right. It just won't boot up.

 

I believe Dell has a 2 year warranty... Call them first!