Flat cable question.

[vetplus40]

Tried to use a older 40 pin connector,40 conductor cable where a newer 40 pin, 80 conductor was.Wouldnt recognize the drive.I am wondering if the 80 wire enables plug-n-play?.My newer cable has the center connector installed backward,cant use both connectors.I May need to have a cable custom made. In order for this one to work,the middle plug would have to be installed to the drive farthest from the MB.This way, the remaining plug could be looped over and connected.Thats physically impossible on this box,to great a distance..Sorry for the windy post,,,just looking for a few answers......thanks...

 

[RaiderJ]

The only difference between an 80-pin and a 40-pin cable is that one will allow ATA66+ speeds (80-pin), and the other won't (40-pin). If you are having trouble getting the cable to reach, you could try splitting the individual wires. This makes the cable MUCH more flexible. BTW, are you manually configuring the Master/Slave drive setup? It doesn't matter what drive is where on the cable, since you can set each drive as either master or slave.

EDIT: I meant 80-wire, not 80-pin. Sorry for any confusion

 

[Whitedog]

There's no such animal as an 80 pin cable...

the ATA66+ cables have 40 pins/80 wires. the extra 40 wires are ground wires in-between each data wire for signal integrity. Without the ground wires seperating the data lines, the system can't do anything faster than ATA33. That's why the "round cable" FAD is such a joke.

There shouldn't be any reason your drive isn't being recognized. Perhaps it's just a bad cable? or maybe it's something in the bios? I've been seeing some strange bios' come out lately. The last board I bought has a message when you boot up telling you that you "don't have an ATA100 cable on secondary IDE channel" I find that to be very annoying myself. Who knows what they have programmed into bios' these days.

Maybe you just need to get an 80 conductor cable and be done with it. It's much better anyway.

.02

 

[vetplus40]

Thanks for both replies........When I tried the 40 wire,the drives were not recognized.The cable is brand new,came with another unit,but was never used.I know that doent mean that is still not defective,but thats all I had to try.The pin one to red stripe matched both cables,and both cables had connectors that were keyed.All 3 cables that came with this Soyo,have the middle connector installed backward from my other cables.I'll just try and locate another cable....Thanks again.......