Yep Bob--

Dell default ships its optical drives jumpered as Cable Select. As you know
most optical drives have a diagram on the back as to how to cable them; some
diagrams are clear and some are pathetic.

http://i42.tinypic.com/1znqyr5.png

CH

"Bob Knowlden" wrote in message
...
I'll agree with another poster that installing an internal DVD drive is
the sensible approach. That, unless you really want to do a lot of messing
around.

Here's an example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827129023

(No the cheapest, but it has free shipping at the moment, so it may have
the lowest net cost.)

support.dell.com gives you the particulars for your system (It's fairly
easy. You screw a couple of rails to the drive, and then slide/snap it in
place.)

Dell seems to like having ATAPI drives jumpered as "cable select".

"Ant" wrote in message
...
Hello.

I have an old Dell Dimension 8250 test PC that I would like to install
Vista onto. However, it has no DVD drives. I cannot even boot from
external USB drives (3.5" disk drive, external HDDs, and DVD burner
drive -- CMOS doesn't see them and found out PC doesn't support bootable
USB devices).

However, I do have enough HDD space (30 GB free on second partition) to
copy Vista DVD (or make an ISO file) onto it through network (will take a
while).

Thank you in advance.
--
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