Why motherboard comes with 80 and 40 pin cables?

[ATIFanboy]

Interesting thing i have ASUS P4G8X Deluxe and it come with one 80 pin and one 40 pin cable, but to run my HDD on secondary channel faster than UDMA-2 i need 80 pin cable. So i have to manually upgrade to 80 pin cable now.
So why ASUS did not think about it and dont ship two 80 pin cables instead?
Or there for some reason have to be 80 and 40 pin cables and its bad idea to put 80 pin for secondary channel?

 

[Peter]

Because 99.9 percent of all users run one HDD and one DVD/CD drive. Since the latter hardly ever do UDMA-33, most still being MWDMA-2 (DMA-16 if you want), the supplied cables make perfect sense.

 

[ATIFanboy]

Originally posted by: Peter
Because 99.9 percent of all users run one HDD and one DVD/CD drive. Since the latter hardly ever do UDMA-33, most still being MWDMA-2 (DMA-16 if you want), the supplied cables make perfect sense.

I see the point but i didnt know there is UDMA-33 maybe you mean ATA-33? And what is MWDMA?

 

[Peter]

UDMA-33, technically correct UDMA mode 2, the fastest mode on 40-wire cable.
MWDMA, multi-word DMA, the technology that preceded UDMA. Mode 2 is 16 MB/s.

ATA-something is the all wrong term for any of the transfer modes. ATA is the name of the specification, currently on revision 7. You may call a drive ATA-7 compliant, but that says nothing about its supported transfer modes.

 

[tcsenter]

Do what I did and order up several so you have some extras handy. At this price, why not?

ATA 100/133 IDE CABLE 18" - $.80 ea. with free shipping

I bought several of them a couple weeks ago. They appear to be your standard generic 80-wire 40-pin IDE cable. Not the expensive Teflon jobbies, but they work fine.

I don't know how they are able sell these for 80 cents with free shipping. Packaging and shipping alone on the cable has to be $.80., I can't see how they aren't giving them away.

Might want to check out their other specials while you're at it. CensusPC had some great prices on a few CPU HSF a couple weeks ago.

 

[ATIFanboy]

Originally posted by: tcsenter
Do what I did and order up several so you have some extras handy. At this price, why not?

Thanks, but i prefer more advanced ones for my one and only pc, this cheap cables may be good for mainstream systems, but i like something more advanced and branded.

 

[tcsenter]

Thanks, but i prefer more advanced ones for my one and only pc, this cheap cables may be good for mainstream systems, but i like something more advanced and branded.

Are you saying that Asus gave you a round IDE cable?

 

[pspada]

I'm sure most mobo makers buy them from the same places, and then stamp their 'brand' on it.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: pspada
I'm sure most mobo makers buy them from the same places, and then stamp their 'brand' on it.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at.

By 'standard generic' cable I didn't mean 'crap'. I meant 'the same cables shipped with most hard drives and motherboards'. These are standard grade PVC ribbon cables, not the premium Teflon/TPO ribbon cables. Most hard drives and motherboards are not shipped with the more expensive cable.