Newbie Question

[Chinoman]

What cables do I need to be able to operate a DVD/RW Drive?

For example, if I were to get this one NEC 3520, would I need to buy editional cables or will the cables that come with the motherboard be enough?

 

[mwmorph]

ide cable. depends what cables came with your mb.

 

[Bozo Galora]

the newest DVD burners run in udma mode, so you need to connect it with an 80 conductor cable, not a 40 conductor. And you must make sure it is running in DMA mode in Windows.

 

[Chinoman]

Umm, I don't get a thing you just said 😛 Are you talking about ATA 133?

 

[agnitrate]

Originally posted by: Chinoman
would I need to buy editional cables or will the cables that come with the motherboard be enough?

I hate buying editional cables. They always come out with a new edition the next year and they only add a few wires and the cable store only buys them back for pennies on the dollar and I get screwed!! 😉

Basically, don't get a cable that looks like this , but rather one that looks like this . There are twice as many pins in the latter cable. I'm not sure it matters much with CD/DVD-ROMS since I don't know what their transfer speed is, but it's a huge difference for hard drives.

-silver

 

[montag451]

the IDE cable is the one you connect from the mobo to a hdd or optical drive.

If your IDE cables have 3 connectors, [one for mobo-blue, one for MASTER usually hdd BLACK, and a SLAVE connector] then you can connect the optical drive to the same cable.
make sure you change the jumper on the back of the drives to suit.
One MASTER, and/or one SLAVE on each cable.
on the primary channel, [sometimes IDE0, then the bootable hdd is MASTER]

 

[Bozo Galora]

I just checked - the 3520 is only udma2 33mb/sec - so old cables are o.k.
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Section...c.aspx?ArticleId=12314
(see burst rate)

note the Pioneer 108 (and Plextor 716a) will do udma 4 66mb/sec, neccessitating 80 conductor for fastest transfers
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Section...c.aspx?ArticleId=10114
(see burst rates)



Even with the advantage of double transition clocking, going above 33 MB/s finally exceeded the capabilities of the old 40-conductor standard IDE cable. To use Ultra DMA modes over 2, a special, 80-conductor IDE cable is required. This cable uses the same 40 pins as the old cables, but adds 40 ground lines between the original 40 signals to separate those lines from each other and prevent interference and data corruption. I discuss the 80-conductor in much more detail here. (The 80-conductor cable was actually specified in ATA/ATAPI-4 along with the first Ultra DMA modes, but it was "optional" for modes 0, 1 and 2.)

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/modesUDMA-c.html