I have both SATA and IDE in the same system. Different interfaces,
different drivers, etc. Should just work. What do you mean by "didn't
work either time"? Can the BIOS see the drive(s), etc?

I have an 80 gig sata laptop drive in my ubuntu desktop. I didn't have any
spare drives except for that one and since ubuntu was just an experiment in
the desktop, I figured it would only be in there temporarily. Everything
worked great. I had one small problem with the sound, but a little typing to
edit a file, and that problem went away.

I brought home a 40gig IDE drive from the shop today and thought I would
just use a copy program to load ubuntu on it, so I could get my spare laptop
drive back.

It is a WD, so I pulled the jumper for single drive and stuck it in the
primary IDE connector. Bios said there were no drives at all.

I tried putting the slave jumper in with the same results.

I plugged it into the secondary port with same results.

Single drive, master, slave, primary, secondary. Same.

Each drive works perfectly alone.

Maybe the bios is too old.

I decided to start over and install 8.10 on the 40gig. I remember what I did
to get the sound to work. I may not need to do that with 8.10. It is just
another piece of the puzzle.

It is great that you had no problems. I think I can live with this, but I'm
mostly just curious.

The main thing is that now I have my spare laptop drive back and I have a
drive that can stay in my ubuntu box permanently.

No, especially if both the SATA and EIDE interface connectors are part
of the motherboard. If one or the other is interfaced via a PCI card,
verify the system's BIOS sees both drives.

If you would please define "it didn't work" (e.g., boot error messages
or BIOS warnings), it might help determine the trouble.

One thing I've noticed with more recent systems (those with SATA drive
interface(s) on the motherboard) is that the newer type of EIDE cable
along with choosing "Cable Select" (CS) is needed for EIDE PATA drives
to work 100% reliably (esp. for ATA 300) -- such cables are normal;y
supplied with newer PATA drives and can also be found/purchased at
good computer hardware stores.

Note there are EIDE HD cables for ATA 66, ATA 100, ATA 133, and
ATA 300 speeds with the higher-speed cables being priced higher.

I also tried CS with a cable with master and slave printed on
it. The SATA and IDE are both on the motherboard. Both master and slave and
in both ports.