This article appeared in the March 2003 WYSIWYG newsletter.
Reinstalling an LS-120 Optical Floppy Drive
by Jerry Carson
Question:
I have an LS120 optical floppy that was installed in my last computer. The problem is on my newer Compaq 7000 800Mhz Win ME machine, this doesn't work. Does this have to be configured as a 2nd hard drive? This newer system has 1 HD, 1 DVD player and 1 CD-RW writer. My single 40Gb hard drive has a cable with an extra connector, but when I tried hooking this up I lost all function. The computer would not boot even when I changed the little clips on the back of the hard drive to make it the master. I eventually got everything working again by removing the LS-120 and messing with the startup disk and sweating a little until I control-alt-deleted a few times. It seemed that the drive had re-assigned their letters and the boot process couldn't find a drive with FAT 32 on it. Any help would be appreciated. Also, is this LS 120 format supported anymore?
Thanks,
More drives than I know what to do with
Answer: Dear More,
Did you try changing the LS-120 to a slave device and the hard drive to a master? If you have more than one device on an IDE connector, one MUST be a master and the other MUST be a slave. You're right about it screwing up the drive letters. Under Windows NT, 2000, or XP you can re-assign the drive letters using Disk Administrator. Otherwise there are freeware utilities, which may help, such as LetterAssigner.
If you really want to get the LS-120 working, I suggest leaving the HD as it is and replacing BOTH the CD-RW and the DVD with the LS-120. If that works, then you can try adding either the CD-RW or the DVD to the connector with the LS-120. If you can get either of those to work with the LS-120, then you can try the other with the HD. Eventually you should be able to make all 4 devices work.
End of Article