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IDE problem

G

Gusty987

Golden Member
I have an IDE DVD drive and an IDE hard drive in my computer. Trouble is, my mobo (965P-S3) has only 1 IDE port, and the "slave" plug on my IDE cable cannot reach the HDD when the end plug is plugged into the DVD drive.

Is there a male-to-female extender or something I can for this or what do people do in this situation??
 
In my case (antec sonata), with the DVD drive in the lowest cd drive slot (i.e. as close together as possible), and the HDD in the highest HDD slot, there is still about 6 inches or so between their IDE ports. On my only IDE cables, the slave and master connectors are only about 4 inches apart (probably the standard).
 
Yeah, you'll either need to get a longer cable (you want the least extra length as possible as 18" is spec for IDE cables) or if your mobo has SATA ports you can adapt your HD to SATA - most cable companies don't guarantee that their longer cables will work in every application. Rosewill and Syba have good PATA to SATA adapters - I like the Syba because it is enclosed. The adapters can be iffy with ATAPI drives like burners. They are in the Adapters and Gender Changers section on Newegg.

.bh.
 
This may sound crazy or just plain wrong but I have done it and it works. Get a 24" round cable and reverse it. They come in different lengths up to 36" but 24" fit my bill. My HD was on the slave about 7 " from the mobo and the DVD was master 12" from that. My boot drive was sata so that was not a prob. Thae cable I used had the blue mobo plug then the gray slave at 16" and the black master at 24". The 36" cables I looked at had 12" between slave /master and the 18" had 6" I only did this the one time but it worked like a champ.

EDIT / ADDED
When I did this I was told by the local shop it would not work. I asked why and no one answered so here is a pic.
On the right second drive down is connected to the HD. That board has 2 IDE connections but I didn't want both burners on the same cable, the distance between the HD and burner was about 12" so I could have used a 36" cable but as mentioned earlier shorter is best.
 
It may work but I believe that the extra 40 ground wires in the cable are only really connected at the blue connector to terminate the grounds so running full speed might be iffy - the next time I come across a defective 80-wire cable, I'll tear the connectors apart to see for sure. However if you are running the drives as Cable Select, then it won't work at all. Master/Slave is possible as that doesn't rely on the cable being wired correctly for CS.

.bh.
 
Cable select zepper, I don't think I've had to use master/ slave since I put a used cd burner in my P3 win 98 system.
This is the cable I used. I'm not using this setup now so I have the cable in hand.
You mentioned ground cables, I see three black, are these the grounds you speak of? could I check them with a continoity tester w/o damaging the cable?



edit/ oops you say half of these wire are ground?
 
No, all the extra 40 wires in an 80-wire cable are grounds as well as the few of the original 40 that were grounds so each signal wire is surrounded by at least a pair of ground wires that act like a shield. I don't know how you would isolate the 40 extra wires to test them as you really only have access to the original 40 wires at the connector as the connectors are still 40-pin. The new 40 wires are connected to ground internally to the connector somehow. I'm curious to see how that is done as the contacts in the old 40-wire cables were already so close together. So eventually I will tear one apart to see and to see whether they are just connected to ground at the blue connector or at all three. I had assumed they would just do it at the blue connector to save costs.

CS shouldn't work on a reversed cable as the contact for the CS0 wire is missing in the gray connector and the contact for the CS1 wire is missing in the black connector - both contacts are present in the blue connector of course. So the secondary drive should never get a select signal if the black connector is connected to the mobo. Are you sure you didn't have to jumper the drives to M/S to work on the reversed cable?

.bh.
 
Originally posted by: Zepper
CS shouldn't work on a reversed cable as the contact for the CS0 wire is missing in the gray connector and the contact for the CS1 wire is missing in the black connector - both contacts are present in the blue connector of course. So the secondary drive should never get a select signal if the black connector is connected to the mobo. Are you sure you didn't have to jumper the drives to M/S to work on the reversed cable?

.bh.
Click to expand...

Yes I'm fairly certain all were cable select, 99%. I'd need to open 2 boxes to look but it is my practice to set all drives to cable select unless I run into problems like I had with the P3 machine. I did some reading last night after my post and really got lost. In the articles I found I caught a little about the cable select and they spoke of "termination" but I found very little good detail.
Altho this is not ata I think its the same theory,
The devices on each end of a SCSI chain must be "terminated"; for an ordinary internal-drives setup, this can require special resistor packs to be plugged into the last drive (and removed, if they're present, from the other drives). Or it may, again, be automatic. Current consumer SCSI controllers all do automatic termination, so you don't have to worry about their end of the chain.
Click to expand...
I'm wondering if it is possible that it is cheaper to manufacture all the plug ends the same only w diff colors possibly cutting or insulating the appropriate wire on the grey?

also zepper I want to thank you for your input as I am not a tech and want to learn. If you could post a link or two I'd appreciate it. If I knew what to look for I'd be willing to chop-up this cable just for an answer.
 
You used to able able to buy mounting kits to put a 3 1/2" HDD in a 5 1/4" bay.

A couple of metal brackets and screws come in the kit. I've got several laying around but can't seem to come up with a link for you.

Found one.

As long as you can afford to lose a 5 1/4" bay, it's not a bad solution. A local computer shop would have them.
 
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