Build Advice Hiding a great big ribbon cable? HELP :(

Does any one have any ideas or a method to make an old ribbon connector cable look less hideous?

All I can think of is just basically covering it in carbon wrap so it looks a little bit less arse than it does now.

I would remove it but I really like the headphone out port on the IO drive. It's really powerful and drives my Nokia Puritys far better than the regular port does.

 

Could you not separate the individual cables from the ribbon (if it's like an IDE cable), bundle it up and then just braid the whole thing?

 

Yeah that's really risky though. If I slice into a cable by accident it's game over

 

What kind of cable is it? Does it connect to the motherboard to the CD drive. If so then I believe these are fairly easy to get hold of. I've never used that cable *ever*, so I'm not too certain on that.

 

It's for my Soundblaster. I have the PCI X-FI Fatal1ty FPS and it comes with an IO drive.

It's quite old (2006 or so) but the technology on the card is no different to the latest PCIE ones.

The cable is some sort of DMA 33 IDE cable.

 

Looking at your sig spec, you shouldn't have an IDE connector on your mobo anyway, so can only guess that it's for something else.

Get yourself a few old IDE ribbons and try out different techniques before you go to town on this which must not be destroyed, whatever it may be.

EDIT: Ninja posted me. OK, soundcard to I/O ribbon but my suggestion still stands.

 

If an normal IDE cable I have some round ones if you want one, Got to look better than a flat one

 

Are they DMA 33? if they're UDMA 66 or ATA/UATA 100/133 they're no good.

I've got a couple of rounded single ended cables somewhere (at mum's I think) but they're 66/100 and the wire is different.

 

TBH I have know idea what they are or how you would tell the difference

 

DMA 33 were different.. They're 'floppier' and have less densely packed wires. 66 were more rigid and could be bent into shape, 100/133 were also the same.

IIRC UDMA 66 was introduced with the P3. Though I could be wrong and 440BX may have had it...

It's been a while

 

AFAIK, DMA 33 was 40 pin. Your soundcard is a 26 pin header so not the same ribbon I'm afraid.

 

It's a DMA 33 IDE cable mate. Loads of people have modded rounded ones to fit (you need to drill out a couple of blocked pins.)

 

Well if that's the case, it's not technically a DMA 33 cable if you have to mod it... however, you've answered your own conundrum

 

If these DMA-33 cables are easy to replace (they seem to be), then I would just go for it.

 

They're only easily replaced if you can find rounded ones and there aren't many around. All of the ones I've seen on Ebay have been in the USA.

When rounded cables first hit (2003ish) we had already all moved to UDMA and ATA cables.

 

If yours is somewhat like the light grey ribbon cable i had to connect the daughter board to my Xonar Hdav 1.3 deluxe you could try doing what I did - colour it with permanent black marker. it took a few coats but worked a treat for me. (ignore the light reflection on it in the PIC, it's truly black)



If the connector blocks themselves won't take the colour try using black nail varnish on them

 

Yeah it's similar to that only bigger. I might see if I can get the rounded IDE cable parts to fit over it without damaging it.

 

I have the same xfi card. The original cable corroded (go figure). UMA 33 is what you want, i.e. IDE cable with less, bigger flixble cables. Just make sure it does not a pin socket blocked. HDD IDE cables sometimes have a pin bent near the middle.

 

Quick update

After exhaustive research and a load of dead threads from 2005 I've deciphered that people did use 80 wire IDE cables and it works fine. Apparently the extra 40 wires are simply grounds to reduce cross talk in an IDE set up.

So that makes it much easier. Somewhere over at my mother's house I have two single device rounded IDE cables that are quite nice to look at

I'll grab them next week if I can find them, if not I'll order one.

Pretty chuffed about that as it will drastically improve the look

 

Separate the floopy cable up into bunches of 3 wires (just use your nail to separate them, you won't damage the wire). twist it so it makes a nice rounded shape then wrap whatever you like round it. From experience I can tell you parcel tape works a treat but looks awful.
Apparently the signal isn't degraded in floppy cables but you shouldn't do it to an ATA-100/133 cable.