since isa ide controllers have only 1 ide port, i have to connect 2 drives on one cable for the 386 rig, one master and one slave of course. i have two 512mb ssds, both from pqi. ssd #1 has blue sticker and 1015 cylinders yielding 500mb actually, and can be detected no matter set to master or slave. but ssd #2 has orange sticker written "standard 2" with only 975 cylinder yielding 480mb, can't be detected when set to slave.

i also got two 512mb cf cards from transcend and a cf-ide converter. i tried two isa ide cards, card1 with goldstar(lg) chip would simply prevent the rig from powering on whenever connected to the cf-ide converter, with 1 long and 8 short ami beeps. card2 with hmc chip would detect the cf card if jumpered to master, but not when jumpered to slave.

can anyone give some ideas on whats causing the problems, and what shall i replace to get two drives running on one ide port?