Morning all, If you have a lovely shielded silver braided IDE cable - much like this one: What would happen if you chopped off the longer piece at the second connector? Would you be left with a very short functioning IDE cable, or a useless pile of wires! The reason I ask is because my hard drive cage is right on top of my IDE ports on the mobo, and even the shortest cable is way too long and making the case all cluttered on the inside. Failing that, anyone know where I can buy very short silver braided IDE cables? Cheers
I have the exact same problem mate. In theory yes you should be able to cut it in half and fit another connector so you have two functioning cables. I even think i've seen articles on other sites on how to do this. I would like to hear from someone who has done this though just so we know it will work
I saw on a site somewhere a while ago and spotted single ended rounded floppy cables, but that was a while ago, if anyone knows of a link to them that'd be good.
Yeah I've seen an article where some1 has cut the unwanted end off the ide cable, and used the silver braid for cable sleaving on other components. Just make sure u make a clean cut and that no wire are capable of touching each other. As for adding another connect to the unwanted cut eeekk especially on a round cable. Would be a impossible task to line up all XX (some1 fill in the number pls ) wires b4 push closing the connector, because the wires on ata66/133 cable are so fine its hard to punch a pin into the middle of it. I had ata133 ribbon where the connector was not attatched properly, it wasnt mounted 90 degress to the ribbon wires, therefore either didnt punch the wire properly or was the pins were touching more than one wire. Needless to say this ribbon didnt work
dont chopp off the long part!!!!!!!! if you do you will have an ATA 33 cable.. because the edge connector on the mobo is different to the ones that go into the drives (it has a ground for every 2nd cable of the 80..) if you chop the short part off you should be ok though..
Yup hes right...I chopped the shorter end of my rounded to connect just one drive and it works great, just dont chop off the longer end!
I did this with some coolermaster rounded cables it worked ok with my CD-roms, but not withh my ata100 hardisk. Think it is due to the fact 40 wires are used with CD-rom and all 80 with ATA66+ Ever notised the hole in the ATA66 flat cables before the slave/middle plug? I think thats why my HDD didnt work with a shortened cable. ride
is that the blue end? crap, explains alot... like why my hard disks were running so DAMN SLOW! thanks roadrunner, only trouble is... the cable aint the right length the other way around
Could you not remove the blue connector from the end, cut the cable to the required length, then re-attach it? I`m gonna find out
yep that will work.. you'll need to cut one of the cables though (not sure which look at a non rounded cable) good luck trying to crimp the cable in the right positions, i gave up & bought new cables therider, the hole isnt why it doesnt work... if you just cut a hole it still wont work.. the blue connector has a grounding strip that grounds every 2nd cable of the 80.. (so the signal is cleaner & therefore faster transfer rates..) the others dont if you just cut the hole you'll get a ata100 cable not detected message & it'll use a maximum of ata33
I thought the hole was on the cable so the mobo knows which is the master plug and which is the slave. Anyone got a pic of an open/uncrimped 80wire IDE plug? ride
This link posted recently has a lot of info. I tried turning my cables round (blue connector to a drive) and it would'nt even boot, never mind just run slow. I'd make sure to configure the drive master, not cable select - cs depends on the position of the drives (last one is master), master/slave is often a bit more flexible (but YMMV )
http://7volts.com/shorten.htm I've shortened a few cables and they all worked. It does require a minimal amount of skill however
ack Wish u would of posted this yesterday morning. I just chopped my cables yesterday and i am using the shorter end. It works fine so I thought till I benchmarked it and checked it in my BIOS. I cant select anything past ata33 now. But hey it looks really nice and clean since they are about 3 inches now and no excess wire going all over the place. I still have the other peices so im gonna try and and put the blue connector on and see what happens. Yippee 80 wires to connect to such a narrow thing and there all loose. Thank goodness I,m on vacation for 2 weeks.
Were is that grounding strip in the blue connector. I didnt see one. Tore the whole thing apart (pieces, i need to learn to be patient).
