What to do with my SCSI cable?

[mallik]

I want to clean up the inside of my case and make it look nice, but I need some ideas on what to do. The cables are all SCSI, except for the floppy cable. There's a 3 device 68-pin cable that REALLY leaves a lot to be desired, a 50-pin cable, and the floppy cable. Now I was going to round them, but apparently, it is not good to round SCSI cable because of the high data transfer speeds or something like that. Any ideas on this? And if it is OK to round them, how should I go about doing this? I looked at some how-to guides, but they all say to cut the cable and then wrap electrical tape around it. That's all well and good, but I wanted to make it look really professional, like maybe with cable sleeving or that glowing stuff or something like that. Any ideas and/or guides on this? If it's not good to round SCSI cables, then what could I do with the cables to make them look nice. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Mallow]

I rounded mine by cutting them individually and then wrapping w/ red electrical tape and have had no problems. However, if you don't want electrical tape cut the cables into 5 cable chuncks and then stack them on top of each other and use glow in the dark tape, heat wrap them or clip them... it's up to you and what you thinks looks nice. I think electrical tape looks pretty darn good and costs about $0.10 in materials

I use an exacto knife to cut the cables. You can find exacto knives at hardware and art supply stores. Make sure you don't cut into the plastic sleaving. I avoided this by cutting very small slits between the cables and then pulling them apart. The less you cut the less the probability to cut into the cables. Trust me, I spent 2 cables and 3 hours perfecting this... use my wisdow

 

[MrThompson]

I know a few folks that have had good luck with rounded SCSI cables from Sidewinder. I'm not a fan of them myself. Nothing but Granite Digital SCSI cables go in my rigs.

 

[m2kewl]

Mallow: I did the same thing! Only with a scapel

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Mallow
I rounded mine by cutting them individually and then wrapping w/ red electrical tape and have had no problems. However, if you don't want electrical tape cut the cables into 5 cable chuncks and then stack them on top of each other and use [...] tape ...

I agree - cutting the cable into 4-8 smaller "chunks" with an exacto knife is probably the safest bet so you can round them and that you probably don't f**k up the cable in doing so. I practised on a couple of IDE cables (40-pin) and, I cut about 2 or 3 pins by accident my first time. I wasn't in the best position, but I don't think I could ever cut all 39 spaces between the pins sucessfully; maybe in spurts but even then all it takes is one slip of the knife. I could do about 10 perfectly, then the accuracy just lowers a tiny bit... Forget about rounding 80-pin cables, btw, the gaps are way too small to work with.

 

[MrThompson]

For 80 pin cables, use a needle to split them instead of a knife or you can fold them into a W. Decent rounded (IDE!) cables are so cheap now, I find it easier to buy them. The manufactured one are more flexible too.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

I use mine to direct airflow, or just place them flat against the MB tray.