briarwood | Apparently I do need a CD drive after all :-)

My audiobook of Swallowing Darkness arrived...and I realised I actually do need a CD drive *headdesk*

After much mucking about, I have determined that the CD drive does work...but not too well, and only if I don't have the second HD hooked up. Which is no damn good at all. I'm beginning to suspect it's the cable at fault, rather than the drive, but I don't think that helps me fix it.

Anyhow, I borrowed Sis's laptop to rip the CDs into iTunes (the MP3 CDs from Audible were so much more convenient, darn it), and I now have Swallowing Darkness on my iPod. So far I'm three chapters in and no one has had sex yet. I'm...almost impressed.

Claudia Black's reading is wonderful. She gets the humour of the character in a way most audiobook narrators don't. I don't mean just for LKH's novels, I listen to a lot of books and there's often a sense that it's not very rehearsed, so that occasionally the narrator gets the emphasis in a sentence wrong. It can make lines meant to be funny fall very flat. Okay, I'm only three chapters in, but I have the feeling Claudia "gets" Merry; either that or she really read the book properly before recording, because so far - no stumbles. And I actually laughed out loud at one point.

Cool. Though I'm beginning to worry for my poor PC. Perhaps it's time to start shopping around for something new. I ought to do that while stores are still allowed to supply XP. No freaking way am I using Vista and I'd rather get it pre-installed than have to reformat and install it myself. I can do that...I'd just rather not.

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Hmm...I'm not a fan of Claudia Black's voice when she acts but I'm curious to see how she does it. (I tend not to listen to audiobooks, prefer to read them myself and assign my own voices to characters.)

I have seen the odd XP around, and I miss it. *pouts* Though Vista has got it's uses (my grandparents want a laptop and we can set up Vista for them so that they cannot destroy anything by clicking which is quite useful.)

I'm a *huge* fan of audio books. I got started when I lived in Liverpool and had a two hour commute to work every day. Now I have an iPod I've got an almost unlimited supply! My favourite books still aren't available in audio, though, so I do still read :-)

Hmm...I'm not a fan of Claudia Black's voice when she acts but I'm curious to see how she does it.

The Merry books are written in the first person, which does work best for the audio format. It's weird listening to Claudia voicing Merry, because the accent is all wrong: Merry's supposed to be this mid-western gal and Claudia does not sound American. OTOH, I'm glad she didn't try to use other than her normal voice. Merry's grandmother is supposed to be a Scot, and she has that accent down pat. It's thicker than it should be, more a caricature than an actual Scots accent, but that fits the character pretty well.

I do miss the old narrator, but so far I'm enjoying this version :-)

BTW: Do you need a map for Friday?

Sucks about the drive. Dell is offering XP still on most models AND also offers Linux, which is a HUGE bonus. Seriously, not missing the bullshit that comes with Windows.

It's easy enough to change a cd drive or even the cable, but it depends on how old the computer is and if you want to take the time to do it (considering drives really aren't too expensive either).

I know. My problem is I don't want to waste money. I could do this the logical way: replace the cable first and tinker with the drive jumpers, then replace the CD drive if that fails. But if that doesn't do it, I'll be stuck with buying a new PC anyhow and I'll have wasted what I've already spent.

When it gets to the point where I'm thinking I need a new motherboard, it's simpler to buy a new PC and upgrade motherboard, processor and graphics card all at once. Not cheaper, but I can get credit that way, which I can't on the components.

It's always money, isn't it? *groans*

*nods* I hear ya. I'd made every repair possible to the old computer before it finally died and stayed dead this spring - when the power supply unit went and did take the motherboard with it. In theory, I could have replaced the mother board, but why? I needed more Ram, hard drive space, etc anyway and it just wasn't worth it.

So yeah. I hear you completely. ;-)

I have no idea about *your* CD drive but a couple of observations ...

... for pre-SATA machines (which most are), there are usually two IDE sockets on the motherboard, so one or two ribbon cables. Each cable can have one or two sockets on it (one at the end, and one a short distance along).

It gets confusing at this point but basically you shouldn't put a CD-ROM on the same cable as a hard disk (it *can* work but it can be very slow or fail), and you have to get the jumpers on the drives right as well ... and using a modern 80-wire cable (or at least one with a grey and a black connector) should make things simpler but probably won't.

There are instructions out on the web about where on the cable you should install the CD-ROM and whether it should be master/slave or cable select. Get those wrong and it would cause problems like the ones you mention.

I tried to find you a nice friendly help page, but my brain exploded so I'm going to get back to work instead.

Thanks! Because I'd forgotten the jumpers thing.

Yes, you're right, and I may have to play around with the jumpers. But I had it on the same cable as a hard drive before - just a different drive. The master/slave setup is the same as before. And when I disconnected the HD and only had the CD drive hooked up - to rip my new CDs - it was working in the sense that the PC recognised it, but it wasn't doing too well.

I don't know what the problem is...yet. *shrugs* Stuff works well enough for now.

Apparently I do need a CD drive after all :-)

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