MP3 Car's External Optical Enclosure

angel120 · 07-08-2008, 04:57 AM

I just received this in the mail yesterday, and I tried it out on my Dell E1505 laptop (w/ Vista).

I popped out my laptop's slim dvd-rw and put it in the enclosure, then booted the laptop up. Vista was able to detect the "IDE to USB" adapter, but that was all. No new drives were available in Computer, the CD wouldn't read (but I could hear it spin).

I figured this was a Vista-related problem and decided to test this out in my car. Plugging the enclosure into the front-panel USB slots (using the USB cable and the DC power, then just using the USB cable), my carPC wouldn't go past the motherboard's splash screen.

Is it defective?

I wanted this because my friends and I are going on a road trip in my car to Hershey Park (approx 175 miles [3hrs] from where I live), and we're leaving on the 18th.

2k1Toaster · 07-08-2008, 05:20 AM

Some drives are very picky about what gets connected to it... Do you have the power plugged in as well? It should have a PS2 power jack or something. If you are using both usb, use the ps2 power connecter.

With the cheap adapters I tried with mine this happened. It was just a compatibility problem with the drive. A different style adapter fixed the issue. I was using the panasonic slim drive I think. model number K06 or something like that.

But why do you need a cd drive for the car? Just put the music on the hd...

angel120 · 07-08-2008, 06:10 AM

Whoa! Quick reply.. Didn't think anyone was up as early as me lol.

I had the USB power plugged in, didn't hit me that the plug was a PS/2 connector, I'll try that later today.

I think the OEM Dell optical is a Panasonic K06something, actually..

There are times my friends have CD's to play, and for the trip, we're probably gonna pop in a DVD or two, just to make the time go by a little quicker. I didn't buy a spare slim optical, I'm just gonna pop out my laptop optical whenever I want it in the car.

However, what can make the computer hang during the BIOS splash screen? Is it that my M3-ATX 125W can't supply enough power, or just a simple incompatibility issue? But then wouldn't an incompatibility fail the POST?

Sonicxtacy02 · 07-08-2008, 08:08 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by angel120

Whoa! Quick reply.. Didn't think anyone was up as early as me lol.

I had the USB power plugged in, didn't hit me that the plug was a PS/2 connector, I'll try that later today.

I think the OEM Dell optical is a Panasonic K06something, actually..

There are times my friends have CD's to play, and for the trip, we're probably gonna pop in a DVD or two, just to make the time go by a little quicker. I didn't buy a spare slim optical, I'm just gonna pop out my laptop optical whenever I want it in the car.

However, what can make the computer hang during the BIOS splash screen? Is it that my M3-ATX 125W can't supply enough power, or just a simple incompatibility issue? But then wouldn't an incompatibility fail the POST?

more than likely you need to have both usb and a 5v power supply plugged in to get the device working. Your hang at boot could be the legacy USB support attempting to read from the dvd drive, but since there's no external power supplied it hangs. U can verify this by turning off all usb legacy options in your bios.