How do you make rounded ATA and FLOPPY Cables.

[jcovercash]

The title says it all, How can I make rounded ata and floppy cables. i need reference to a good online guide or some help pictures would be good.

 

[JesusCow]

this is what i followed: http://www.virtualhideout.net/guides/rc/index.shtml

 

[jcovercash]

yes i was looking at it right now.

 

[jlind23]

For those of you that have tried this are there any warnings that we newbie's might want to be aware of?

Thanks

 

[jcovercash]

I am half way through with my floppy cable It is not that hard. Thanks for your help JesusCow, Now i just need some blue electrical tape.

 

[Khayman]

Warning: "There has been some talk of data loss or signal crosstalk when you do this"

[ K ]

 

[jcovercash]

yea but suppsedly if you do it right you want have any.

 

[Khayman]

What would be the wrong way to cut your cables up and wrap them together in tape?

[ K ]

 

[jcovercash]

uhh slicing one of the cabels, Hey i have two sets of all the cables tyring it on my older ones, JUST in case LOTS of people do it with out problems and i am sure there are ones that have problems

 

[Mday]

here are some tips:

don't go nuts. if you separate each wire, you'll end up with a mess. just cut ever few wires and stack.

remember that the floppy cable has it's own "twist" so, work with it, your outcome won't be as smooth as the ATA cables, but it'll work

DO NOT wrap the entire cable with electrical tape. the cable will be very stiff, and fairly useless.

if your existing cable is just long enough, don't do the modification, you'll need slack because the rounding will decrease the "length" of the cable some.

use a sharp knife, preferable one with a thin blade, like a razor.

make sure your work area is well lit, and if you have a magnifying setup, use it.

ignore the problems with crosstalk, it's negligible if you stack.

make sure you do have extra cables lying around if you cut a conductor, you'll need it.

 

[jcovercash]

I have already made the floppy cable. Right now I am starteing on some serious case modding. I used some silver cable wrap to tie them up, so that it will shine when my lights are on.

 

[blackhawk]

I used a hair dryer to warm the cables and make them easier to separate. Start the cut then pull apart. Only sliced one.
Ata 66+ is much harder.

 

[jamarno]

Why do you want to do this?

An 80-wire ATA cable is so fine that it's hard to separate the wires, and you don't want to do this anyway because it degrades the signal quality since every other wire is a ground. The same is true for the grounds of a floppy cable, and because floppy drives don't have error correction, you could end up with bad data on the disk.

If you want round cables, either buy or make twisted-pair cables because then you will have something that's electrically superior to any conventional ribbon cable.

 

[Von Ribbentrop]

Why cut them and take a chance of screwing them up. FOLD them! Fold them into 4 equal parts, like an M, basically does the same thing without the risk. Works great with all cables including ATA66/100 and SCSI. I use zip ties to secure them.