Why are ATA66/100 IDE connectors where they are?

[Slickone]

Why is it necessary to put the master device on the end of the cable, and slave on the middle connector? Since in most cases, the HDD cage is located at the bottom, this many times keeps you from putting a device as a slave on that controller since it will probably be located above the HDD cage and the cable probably won't reach back down to the HDD (master) after connecting to the slave device. Especially true if you have a 3.5" external bay (floppy/zip) in between the two (like Antec cases). And if it will reach, this makes you put the secondary device in the bottom external bay which you may not always want.
Or maybe they make ATA66/100 cables with longer distances between master and slave connector? If so, only the short ones ever come w/ the mobos I buy for some reason.
[/rant]

 

[Imaginer]

Dude. Why not just change the jumpers on the hard drive, zip drive, cd drive, dvd drive, and whatever drive to master and slave. Cabling would not be a problem then.

Unless some idiot manufacturer did not include such jumpers.

If you are talking about the distance between the first and second connector from the cable, I agree it maybe too short. Some people have asked about reversing them and I think it may work. That or it would be a very tricky situation if you plan on having a hard drive in the cage way below and having a slave device such as a CD wayyyy up high.

 

[CQuinn]

The short answer is: the connector has been around a lot longer than the case design you are using, and
was built when most systems only had room for one drive, so a secondary drive was a double-afterthought.

And yes, they do make longer IDE cables, and cable kits where you can fit the connectors where you want them
to be. But again, these go beyond the standard PC designs, so hobbyists have to look for them separately.

 

[bozo1]

You only have to put the master at the end of the cable if you have the drives jumped for 'cable select'. If they are jumpered master or slave, it doesn't matter what connector you use on the cable.

 

[Slickone]

Imaginer, for the first part of your question: because the HDD has to be master. For the 2nd part: I can't even put the slave in the lowest external bay in my Antec SX840.

bozo1, can you point to more data on this?
When I asked in Usenet awhile back, I got:


<< Because if you attach just one drive to the center of the cable, it
leaves a long "stub" hanging off the end which causes signalling
issues. When we were running at slow speeds it wasn't much of an issue, but as speeds get higher it causes problems with noise, reflections, etc. >>


and


<< I just did this inadvertently, and am grateful for this
posting that drew my attention to it. I can answer your
question as far as what I observed: there was no
corruption, just *very* slow operation. The master ran in
UDMA (actual mode not known) and the slave ran in PIO! I
couldn't figure out what the heck was going on until I read
this and DUH... I didn't pay any attention to which was
which. So I'm here to testify that it really does matter.
Oh yeah, when I fixed it, both drives went to UDMA. So
there ya go. >>