Condutor Cable 80gig hard drive

[Charles]

I brought a new hard drive and set it up with WinXP and as
it goes through the boot up process it has a message
"Primary IDE Channel no 80 Condutor cable installed". Not
sure what this means and was unable to find any
information on it. Can someone please help me with this.

Thank you in a advance,

Charles

 

[Chris S.]

You need the newer ribbon cable to support the
new EIDE drives. I has an extra 40 "ground" conductors
to improve transfer speeds. It's stiffer and usually has
a blue connector on the IDE controller end.

Chris

 

[willit]

Most of your new drives want a 80 conductor cable vs a 40
conductor cable. ATA 100 and 133 drives will have less
errors with one. They are readily available for $8.00. A
IDE cable should NOT be over 18" though. Most of the 80
conductor cables are round and not the flat ribbon that
you normally see.

www.tigerdirect.com

c184-26961 18" $7.99

 

[Chris S.]

The "round" cables are nothing more that the flat ribbon
cables rolled up in a round tube. They often contribute to "crosstalk"
and should be avoided.

Chris

 

[Charles]

Chris,

Thank you,

Charles

-----Original Message-----
You need the newer ribbon cable to support the
new EIDE drives. I has an extra 40 "ground" conductors
to improve transfer speeds. It's stiffer and usually has
a blue connector on the IDE controller end.

Chris




.

 

[Kenny]

The round ones can improve air flow and thus cooling inside the case.

 

[Chris S.]

Kenny,

Yes that's the usual argument. I still prefer properly dressed
flat ribbon cable. I've corrected many a problem by replacing
those round rolled up ribbons. YMMV

Chris S.

 

[Charles]

WilliT,

Thank you,

Charles

-----Original Message-----
Most of your new drives want a 80 conductor cable vs a 40
conductor cable. ATA 100 and 133 drives will have less
errors with one. They are readily available for $8.00. A
IDE cable should NOT be over 18" though. Most of the 80
conductor cables are round and not the flat ribbon that
you normally see.

www.tigerdirect.com

c184-26961 18" $7.99







.

 

[Willit]

You may be right, on the flat ones. The cable seems to be
weak link anyway. Maybe the SATA cables will slove some of
the problems. I have plenty of ATA 133 drives that should
have a 80's , but the raid card will not run on them. The
cards keep showing a event has occured and starts a re-
build, so I had to switch back to the 40's

 

[Chris S.]

Yes. The downside to the 80s is rather high distributed capacitance,
attenuating the signal, and causing marginal drives to fail. Use cables as
short
as possible and if using only one drive, put it on the end. You don't neet
the "stub" to
act as an antenna!

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

You may be right, on the flat ones. The cable seems to be
weak link anyway. Maybe the SATA cables will slove some of
the problems. I have plenty of ATA 133 drives that should
have a 80's , but the raid card will not run on them. The
cards keep showing a event has occured and starts a re-
build, so I had to switch back to the 40's

<snip>

If the card is doing its job right, it should drop back to ATA33 when it
detects a 40 wire cable - which will, indeed, cure a lot of data errors.

 

[EGMcCann]

And properly dressed... where do you find a tux for a ribbon cable? And does
it need tails?

(remembering old Apple II-series systems with actual "rainbow" ribbon
cables...)