Add ATA hard drive to 8400's IDE

Hi -

First off, I confess to flying by the seat of my pants. But hey, so what. I like learning new stuff.

I installed a Maxtor ATA 60 gig drive from my old system into this new Dim 8400. The IDE channel has only a DVD drive so a put the hard drive as drive 1 on the available connector (set to cable select).

Well, it works but I noticed video playback from the drive was stuttering. Investigating, I found the drive is operating in PIO mode (with 'DMA if available' set). Tried removing-reinstalling the Primary IDE Channel driver, but NG.

Further investigating - Maxtor site says I should be using an 80 pin ATA cable, otherwise I might get what I'm seeing...OK, but the Dell literature says the IDE connector on the main board is 40 pin!

I did see this question posed here (adding ATA HD to IDE on an 8400), but I don't recall seeing a post about how it turned out. Well, I tried it and that's where I'm at - PIO mode.

Am I S.O.L.?

TIA- John