CD/DVD drive problem on M10000 board

[Cret]

Hi all, great board - have been reading & digesting the info on here for a while now and it's all very helpful!

I'm part way through doing my first carputer build and am having a slight problem with a drive working/not working intermittently.
I've got a VIA Epia M10000 board and currently have it hooked up in a normal ATX case with a laptop 40gb drive as the primary master, and have a slimline slotload dvd player as the secondary master (or alternatively the cd unit that is still in the old atx case).
Problem is that sometimes when it boots the secondary is not detected and sometimes it is. The IDE cable seems connected fine at both ends and I've never previously had an issue with the cable I'm using. This happens whichever one of the two CD/DVD drives I'm using but the primary drive (HDD) is always fine.

Is it possible there's a fault with the secondary on the motherboard somehow? Maybe there's a way I can test the IDE cable to see if it's faulty, or is there some other fault that could cause the drive to not get detected?

Cheers!
Jim

Forgot to add also, is there a PCI sound card that I can use on this to increase the voltage output to at least 2v (preferably 4v) without paying an insane amount of money? It doesn't have to be top notch stuff just something slightly better than onboard sound and with a higher voltage output for my amps as I've read on here that the M10000 only puts out 0.5v!!!!!!