tsai

i have the panasonic cw8123B drive. tested on a desktop with the 50 to 40 pin adapter and it worked flawlessly. i hooked it up to the car computer and it would read audio cd and dvd video fine but data discs would crap the system out.
so i thought maybe the 36" IDE cable was to blame since i believe all IDE cables are only guaranteed to work up to 18".
i put in an IDE to firewire adapter and although it seemed to help a little, reading data discs would still fail quite consistantly.
what could it be? i don't think the drive is bad since it worked fine when it was in the desktop. i had extended one of the molex connectors off the opus 90W power supply by about a foot to power both the firewire adapter and the 50 to 40 pin adapter seperatly. unless its simply the power supply not able to supply the needed power, i don't think the added length was an issue.
here's all the peripherals connected to the system. laptop HD, the above mentioned dvd drive, usb gps, usb fm, and usb sound card, usb hub with seperate power. i suspect its lack of power that's causing the problem. any help is appreciated.
thanks