Hello there.

I have a samsung CD rom and a sony CD writer.
They work well when either of them is connected to the system.
But when both of them are connected together, only CD ROM works.

Please tell me how should I make them work together.

How are you hanging them off your system? Are you installing them as a master and a slave on the same IDE channel?

To simplify what Ross said:

If you look on the back of each of the drives, you'll notice a small group of pins (usually between the IDE connector and the power connector), 2 of which will be connected (top to bottom) with a jumper.

There should be a diagram on the top of the drive which tells you what the jumper settings should be (beware though, they differ from drive to drive - just to make things complicated).

If your CD-ROM and CD-RW are both connected to the same IDE connector, you need to make sure that one of the drives is set as the master and one of them is set as the slave. If they're both set as master, only one of them will work.

To change one of the drives to slave, all you need to do is move the jumper to the right pair of pins, as per the diagram on the top of that drive.

Hope this helps

Rgds
AndyF

thanks guys !!!

What if I connect them on different IDEs ?

That is a possible solution. Be aware that you should never attach anything onto an IDE channel that already has a hard disk (unless you're adding another hard disk). CD-ROM and Tape drives can seriously affect the performance of the HD (it's all to do with ultra DMA modes you see).

If you are running your hard disk off an SATA connection (or you have additional IDE channels on a PCI controller) separating your optical drives is probably the best config you can have (it helps greatly when performing copying CDs). That is how I have my drives setup; my HD is an SATA device.

That being said, in the past when I had a DVD-ROM (as master) and a CD-RW (as slave) on the same channel, I never experienced any problems whatsoever.

Thanks guys !!!

Your suggestions are off the hook.
I am a bit too busy to try those.
For further problems I shall let you know.