Installing a CD Burner
Tired of all those floppy disks lying around, wish you could consolidate them all onto a couple of disks. You’ve heard people talking about burning files and music to CD’s, but not sure how to go about this, continue reading and I will show you how to install a CD burner and burn CD’s. We’ll start with the term burning CD’s. That does not mean you catch them on fire, it simply means to copy files to a CD disk. Now that we’ve cleared that up, most new computer systems come with a CD burner, but if you have an older computer you can install a CD burner fairly, quickly, and easily.
To determine if you have a CD burner already, look at the front of your computer. If it says Compact Disk then you need to install a CD burner. On the other hand if it says Compact Disk ReWritable then you have a CD burner and you can skip to using the burning software. To start unplug your computer’s power cord, then remove the cover. Depending on your computer, you may have an extra bay right above or below your CD-ROM drive. If this is the case you can keep your old CD ROM drive and use it to copy from one CD to another if you need to.
We will figure you have an extra bay. Now look on the back of your old and new CD ROM Drive, you should see a group of pins and a little black or white cap these are called jumpers. You will need to set your new drive to be master and your old drive to be slave, you’ll see the pins are labeled MA, SL and CS “master, slave and cable select”. Hang in there, you’re almost home. Look inside your computer, you will see a long flat cable going to the back of your old CD ROM drive. It should have three connectors. One you may not be able to see because it will be connected to the motherboard, and one should not be connected to anything. Now in the empty bay, the front plate will snap out. You will be able to slide your new drive in place. Screw the new drive in place with the four screws that came with it.
Next, unplug the cable from the back of your old drive and plug it into your new drive. Then take the connector that was not connected to anything and connect it to your old drive. Ok, if your old cable only has a total of two connectors, then your new drive came with a three-connector cable. You will have to use that one. You will have to locate a spare power connector; it should be white. Just look at the one that is plugged into your old drive to see what it looks like. Once you have everything plugged in you can replace the cover and turn your computer back on. Windows will recognize the new drive. Now if you do not have a spare bay all you have to do is unscrew the old drive and unplug the connectors. Then slide your old drive out and slide the new drive in and that’s it. That wasn’t so hard, and now you’re almost ready to burn some CD’s. Continue onto the next step, and you will learn how to use the burning software.
