Do all 80-connector IDE flat cables have blue connectors?

[mm]

Do all 80-connector IDE flat cables have blue connectors?

Alternatively, if I have a Dell Dimension 4700 with a CD and DVD
drive, with a bad cable, and both drives are set to CS, and I don't
have a spare 80-connector cable, can I use a 40-connector flat cable
and set the farther drive to Master and the nearer drive to Slave?

If I'm not concerned about speed, can I just use it this way?

Thanks.

 

[Paul]

Do all 80-connector IDE flat cables have blue connectors?

Alternatively, if I have a Dell Dimension 4700 with a CD and DVD
drive, with a bad cable, and both drives are set to CS, and I don't
have a spare 80-connector cable, can I use a 40-connector flat cable
and set the farther drive to Master and the nearer drive to Slave?

If I'm not concerned about speed, can I just use it this way?

Thanks.

Mine is black on the motherboard end, and grey for the two on
the drive end. Some of my older cables, may have the color scheme
you're seeing. (I'd have to take the side off a few PCs, to
carry out a survey for you )

With regard to your 40 wire cable, the answer is yes, master for
one, slave for the other, and when the 40 wire cable is detected,
the computer shouldn't run the cable transfer rate faster than
33MB/sec. The rate used, should be sufficient for all but the very
fastest media (which I haven't located any source for anyway).
The 40 wire cable should be fast enough to do 16x DVD writes
without a problem. A Blu Ray might go faster, but I don't know
if they make Blu Ray drives with IDE interfaces (they might all
be SATA).

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_Cable.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd

16x 21.60MB/sec <--- might be able to buy media
24x 32.40MB/sec <--- getting close to limit

HTH,
Paul

 

[mm]

Mine is black on the motherboard end, and grey for the two on
the drive end. Some of my older cables, may have the color scheme
you're seeing. (I'd have to take the side off a few PCs, to
carry out a survey for you )

That's okay. Don't take a survey.

With regard to your 40 wire cable, the answer is yes, master for
one, slave for the other, and when the 40 wire cable is detected,
the computer shouldn't run the cable transfer rate faster than
33MB/sec. The rate used, should be sufficient for all but the very
fastest media (which I haven't located any source for anyway).
The 40 wire cable should be fast enough to do 16x DVD writes
without a problem. A Blu Ray might go faster, but I don't know
if they make Blu Ray drives with IDE interfaces (they might all
be SATA).

In general, I'm not in a hurry. In fact in a lot of ways, I still
live in the 1950's, or at least I wish I did.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_Cable.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd

16x 21.60MB/sec <--- might be able to buy media
24x 32.40MB/sec <--- getting close to limit

HTH,

Yes. I may get back to you today or tomorrow, or maybe this solves
my problem.

Thanks.

 

[Don Phillipson]

Do all 80-connector IDE flat cables have blue connectors?

For at least some manufacturers, blue connectors indicated
cables suitable for Cable Select installations (cf. jumpers.)

 

[philo]

Do all 80-connector IDE flat cables have blue connectors?

Alternatively, if I have a Dell Dimension 4700 with a CD and DVD
drive, with a bad cable, and both drives are set to CS, and I don't
have a spare 80-connector cable, can I use a 40-connector flat cable
and set the farther drive to Master and the nearer drive to Slave?

If I'm not concerned about speed, can I just use it this way?

Thanks.

For optical devices, the 40 wire cable is fine

the 80 wire cable won't be any faster

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

For optical devices, the 40 wire cable is fine

the 80 wire cable won't be any faster

Some optical drives, like the Teac DV-W516E, support UDMA 4 (66 MHz),
so a 40-wire cable may cause Windows to turn off DMA and use PIO
transfers only, which can make the computer sluggish, even with a dual
core CPU. I don't know about CPUs with more cores.

 

[philo]

Some optical drives, like the Teac DV-W516E, support UDMA 4 (66 MHz),
so a 40-wire cable may cause Windows to turn off DMA and use PIO
transfers only, which can make the computer sluggish, even with a dual
core CPU. I don't know about CPUs with more cores.

I guess I've got some old info tucked away in my brain then.

Yeah. dual core cpu or not...
the data can't be transferred any faster than what the cable can support.

 

[mm]

For at least some manufacturers, blue connectors indicated
cables suitable for Cable Select installations (cf. jumpers.)

Thanks, everyone.

So if not every manufacturer uses blue, what about the converse
question:

How can I tell if a flat cable is 80-conductor? Maybe it's not blue,
maybe it's not black at one end and grey at the other two ends?

Maybe it doesnt' matter anymore because IDE is out and SATA is in?


BTW, this came up because neither my CD-writer or DVD-reader on the
Dell I inherited would work. (They were both CS, but nothing looked
special about the cable.) But they didnt' work with a new cable, one
marked as Master and the other not used.

It turned out takeing out the CMOS battery for a while corrected
things.

It also had
1) a CMOS option to Restore to Defaults, and
2) another option to turn off PATA1 and PATA2 and turn them on again.

It's moot now but do you think both one and two would have worked as
well as removing the battery.

 

[Paul]

How can I tell if a flat cable is 80-conductor? Maybe it's not blue,
maybe it's not black at one end and grey at the other two ends?

When the cable type is "80-conductor", it means there are
80 wires inside it. Each "plastic bump" in the ribbon cable, hides
a wire inside it. The IDT (insulation displacement technology) connector
bites through the insulation and touches the wire, which is how the
connector makes connections to the cable. The IDT connector is
installed with a press, and the force of the press, cause the
"bite" of the connector contacts to the wires in the cable.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Flachbandkabel.jpg

So all ya gotta do, is "count to 80" Count the bumps. 80-conductor
cables are more finely spaced, than 40-conductor cables. You can tell
the two types apart, without counting the bumps, but to be absolutely
sure, you count them. In the lab, we used to have reels of different
widths of ribbon cable, and you have to grab the correct reel, before
running off and making cables.

Paul

 

[mm]

When the cable type is "80-conductor", it means there are
80 wires inside it. Each "plastic bump" in the ribbon cable, hides
a wire inside it. The IDT (insulation displacement technology) connector
bites through the insulation and touches the wire, which is how the
connector makes connections to the cable. The IDT connector is
installed with a press, and the force of the press, cause the
"bite" of the connector contacts to the wires in the cable.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Flachbandkabel.jpg

So all ya gotta do, is "count to 80"

Okay, thanks. I'll try. I missed a few days of class in the first
grade, so I never really learned how to count well.

Actually, this started because the new-old (2004 or 5) Dell I have has
two optical drives both jumpered as CS and some people have been
saying only 80 conductor will work with CS.

But otoh I'm pretty sure I remember seeing CS long before I'd heard of
80-conductor, and I'm pretty sure i read last week that 80-conductor
wasn't the only way to do it.

And looking now at the Dell cable, I count only 40 conductors.

I'm sure that's all it is, but for the record,

On one side it is marked: DRIVE 0 DRIVE 1 P0971 Foxcon C
aug-06-04 (which is about when the computer was built) SYS BRD

And on the other side it says: RU AWM 2651 []05^ C 300V E124935-B
ACTUONE LL110918 CSA AWM I A/B 105^C 300V FT1 204080210 34


But it turned out the drives didn't work because something got screwed
up in the BIOS and removing the CMOS battery for a few hours made the
drives visible again.


When I did have 80-wire cables, I looked and didn't notice the 80
bumps, but now, I only have two such cables that I know of, and
they're inside computers.

 

[Paul]

When the cable type is "80-conductor", it means there are
80 wires inside it. Each "plastic bump" in the ribbon cable, hides
a wire inside it. The IDT (insulation displacement technology) connector
bites through the insulation and touches the wire, which is how the
connector makes connections to the cable. The IDT connector is
installed with a press, and the force of the press, cause the
"bite" of the connector contacts to the wires in the cable.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Flachbandkabel.jpg

So all ya gotta do, is "count to 80"

Okay, thanks. I'll try. I missed a few days of class in the first
grade, so I never really learned how to count well.

Actually, this started because the new-old (2004 or 5) Dell I have has
two optical drives both jumpered as CS and some people have been
saying only 80 conductor will work with CS.

But otoh I'm pretty sure I remember seeing CS long before I'd heard of
80-conductor, and I'm pretty sure i read last week that 80-conductor
wasn't the only way to do it.

And looking now at the Dell cable, I count only 40 conductors.

I'm sure that's all it is, but for the record,

On one side it is marked: DRIVE 0 DRIVE 1 P0971 Foxcon C
aug-06-04 (which is about when the computer was built) SYS BRD

And on the other side it says: RU AWM 2651 []05^ C 300V E124935-B
ACTUONE LL110918 CSA AWM I A/B 105^C 300V FT1 204080210 34


But it turned out the drives didn't work because something got screwed
up in the BIOS and removing the CMOS battery for a few hours made the
drives visible again.


When I did have 80-wire cables, I looked and didn't notice the 80
bumps, but now, I only have two such cables that I know of, and
they're inside computers.

The cables should be the same width. But the 80-conductor one looks like
finer conductors.

http://www.mikeshardware.com/pics/ide8040pin.jpg

As far as I know, the 80-conductor is supposed to be every second wire is
a ground wire. So that's what they do with the extra wires. Add grounds.

In the diagram here, the inner two rows are connected together, and
so those are the grounds. Even a few of the other 40 are grounds as well.

http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Ultra_ATA_66/100_IDE

Paul

 

[mm]

mm wrote:

How can I tell if a flat cable is 80-conductor? Maybe it's not blue,
maybe it's not black at one end and grey at the other two ends?

When the cable type is "80-conductor", it means there are
80 wires inside it. Each "plastic bump" in the ribbon cable, hides
a wire inside it. The IDT (insulation displacement technology) connector
bites through the insulation and touches the wire, which is how the
connector makes connections to the cable. The IDT connector is
installed with a press, and the force of the press, cause the
"bite" of the connector contacts to the wires in the cable.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Flachbandkabel.jpg

So all ya gotta do, is "count to 80"

Okay, thanks. I'll try. I missed a few days of class in the first
grade, so I never really learned how to count well.

Actually, this started because the new-old (2004 or 5) Dell I have has
two optical drives both jumpered as CS and some people have been
saying only 80 conductor will work with CS.

But otoh I'm pretty sure I remember seeing CS long before I'd heard of
80-conductor, and I'm pretty sure i read last week that 80-conductor
wasn't the only way to do it.

And looking now at the Dell cable, I count only 40 conductors.

I'm sure that's all it is, but for the record,

On one side it is marked: DRIVE 0 DRIVE 1 P0971 Foxcon C
aug-06-04 (which is about when the computer was built) SYS BRD

And on the other side it says: RU AWM 2651 []05^ C 300V E124935-B
ACTUONE LL110918 CSA AWM I A/B 105^C 300V FT1 204080210 34


But it turned out the drives didn't work because something got screwed
up in the BIOS and removing the CMOS battery for a few hours made the
drives visible again.


When I did have 80-wire cables, I looked and didn't notice the 80
bumps, but now, I only have two such cables that I know of, and
they're inside computers.

The cables should be the same width. But the 80-conductor one looks like
finer conductors.

http://www.mikeshardware.com/pics/ide8040pin.jpg

Based on this picture, there's no doubt in my mind that the Dell
Dimension 4700, made in 200x , has a 40-conductor wire but shipped
with..... Well, I guess it's conceivable that someone fiddled with it
since it was shipped. I only got it a month ago.

That someone connected things wrong might even account for how the
CMOS settings got messed up. I have no idea but I want to find out.
Okay, I'll have to get back to you after I connect things the way I
got them. Right now, nothing is CS.

Sorry. But I appreciate the picture of the two cables.

 

[mm]

Based on this picture, there's no doubt in my mind that the Dell
Dimension 4700,

made November 2004

 

[mm]

Paul wrote

Based on this picture, there's no doubt in my mind that the Dell
Dimension 4700, made in 200x , has a 40-conductor wire but shipped
with..... Well, I guess it's conceivable that someone fiddled with it
since it was shipped. I only got it a month ago.

That someone connected things wrong might even account for how the
CMOS settings got messed up. I have no idea but I want to find out.
Okay, I'll have to get back to you after I connect things the way I
got them. Right now, nothing is CS.

Dang, I reconnected everything and forgot to make them CS. They are
Master and Slave. I don't feel like redoing it, so I don't know if
they'll work as CS with a 40-conductor cable.

Assuming CS works, is it as good as Master and Slave?

 

[Paul]

Assuming CS works, is it as good as Master and Slave?

As far as I know, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_select#Cable_select

"It is a common myth that the controller on the master drive
assumes control over the slave drive, or that the master drive
may claim priority of communication over the other device on
the channel. In fact, the drivers in the host operating system
perform the necessary arbitration and serialization, and each
drive's onboard controller operates independently of the other."

Paul