you want it on a seprate chain from your HDD, personially i put my burner on the master of the chain. as for software for burning check out Nero, its just about the best burning software you can get.
http://www.nero.com/us/index.html here the link for the software. As for connections inside your system, just make sure the jumper is set for master or slave depending on where you place it, plug in your audio cable from the drive to your soundcard, plug in the power.
Boot your system and load up the bios and make sure the drive gets detected, once thats done just boot into your OS and make sure its seen as a drive. After that its just a matter of loading up your burning software and haveing at it.
In terms of cable cost, ide 5 bucks, audio cable 5 bucks tops.