Cables

[new builder]

Hey guys,

Quick question from the new guys here. I have a epox 4g4a motherboard. I want to buy round IDE cables. I'll be hooking up a cd burner, dvd rom drive, hard drive and a normal run of the mill floppy disk drive. How should these be hooked up? Should I have the burner on the second IDE channel with it being the master, and the DVD being the slave on that channel? Should I put the hard drive as the master on the first IDE channel? Where do I hook the floppy disk drive too?

How long of cables do you think I should need. I never did this before, so I don't want extra cable just lying around. ANy brands to stay away from? It'll all be going into a case about 440ish mm high.

Thanks:cheers:

[Darthtanion]

Hard drive - Master on Primary channel
Burner - Master on Secondary channel
DVD - Slave on Secondary channel

The length will depend on the case. I'd guess that you have a normal ribbon cable laying around somewhere? Measue it off with that and get as close to that length as possible. If it ends up being way too long, then you can use some zip ties to secure it to a side post of the case or similar.

Make sure to keep your optical drives off the primary channel. This will allow your hard drive to work at it's best without a slower drive holding it back.

[Wiggo]

The standard for IDE cable lengths is 18" maximum though a lot of places will sell 24" ones but signal quality degrades very fast in an IDE cable which is why the stardard was set at 18". A number of times now I've had to replace 24" cables in PC's of others that were being troublesome with 18" ones and the troubles just vanished. ;)
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[E^vol]

great info...I would never have thought about the signal degrading.....thx...

[drpeterbright]

Wiggo I have heard that the rounded cables are not as good as standard ones (except for looks and cooling). Is there any truth to that?

[drpeterbright]

zeradul That's a great price & you can have a number of fans installed for a reasonable price. PS can be upgraded too. :cool:

[Mr. C]

new builder FYI; the floppy drive uses a floppy cable that goes to a completely seperate socket on the motherboard. It has 24 conductors and is only used by floppy drives, zip drives and some tape drives.

drpeterbright a properly rounded cable performs equally with a standard cable.

[zeradul]

zeradul That's a great price & you can have a number of fans installed for a reasonable price. PS can be upgraded too

I have a hunch that is in the wrong thread? ;)

[FLaCo]

I recently bought round IDE and a Round Floppy and they work just like my ribbons but now i have a better airflow....not really there for the looks since i have it covered with my side panel. Anyway, i see peter mentioned Zeradul's name yet he hasn't shown up on this thread...was it a misplaced reply ?....

EDIT: you beat me to it ZeraDuL

[Wiggo]

drpeterbright[/size]]
Wiggo I have heard that the rounded cables are not as good as standard ones (except for looks and cooling). Is there any truth to that?

They have their advantages if you can't route flat ones out of the way but cheap poorly made ones and the extra longs ones have been found to be wanting in a lot of cases. So if you do want them get reputable brand ones and try to stay away from the 24" longies. ;)
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Mr. C]

I have a hunch that is in the wrong thread? ;)

Ahh well, you get a couple dozen IE windows open - It's a wonder it doesn't happen more often:smokin:

[zeradul]

It's a wonder it doesn't happen more often

haha, I was thinking the exact same thing.. I always have 20 windows open, I worry all the time about posting the wrong stuff in the wrong thread... so to make sure I look at the thread contents below the reply box....

[new builder]

Thanks guys. The rounded cables i picked up made the case sooooo much less clustered looking.:D

[drpeterbright]

Send us a pic so we can see too.

[akapaul]

How do people put 3-4 hdds and 2 cd devices?