The 80-wire cable is springy whereas a normal 40 wire cable will flopy when bent. 40 wire cables have wires that you can easily feel the separation between whereas 80-wire cables have the wires a lot closer together. 80-wire cables usually have a pull tab on each connector i.e. a piece of plastic you grab and pull to disconnect the cable froma drive. 80-wire cables provide more shielding to the ide signal so that it is not currupted at udma/66 speeds and higher. Most system boards now ship with uata/100 controllers and unless specifically slowed down they power up in the fastest mode supported by drive and controler. Without an 80-wire udma/66 cable data corruption can and does occurr. One of the weakest parts of the ata spec was the cable; you don't have the redundant grounds for each signal like scsi does. Regards, Kerry. On Mon, Feb 25, 2002 at 01:08:09AM +0100, Victor Tsaran wrote: > Hi, Kerry! > I used the cable which came with my motherboard. I am not sure if this is an > 80-wire or not. Would this matter? How would I identify the difference > otherwise? > Thanks, > Victor > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Kerry Hoath" <kerry at gotss.net> > To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> > Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 10:30 PM > Subject: Re: Strange things with my hard drive > > > > Did you make sure that the cable to the hard drive was an 80-wire > > udma-66 cable? Compared to the cdrom cable the wires are finer. > > UDMA-66 cables are also more springy and less flexible than standard ones. > > Even modern burners run at a maximum of udma/33 which doesn't require > special cables. > > Hard drives on the other hand can run at udma/66 or uata/100 and > > failure to use an 80-wire cable with a stupid o/s which fails to disable > udma > > can and usually does result in data corruption. The operating system in q > > question comes from Redmond :-) > > Linux shuts down dma if it sees 3 crc errors. > > Win 2k and XP are supposed to do this too but sometimes > > it doesn't happen. > > > > Regards, Kerry. > > On Sun, Feb 24, 2002 at 12:56:37PM -0500, Igor Gueths wrote: > > > Hi. You might want to slave the Cdrom to the hard drive. I haven't > actually built a machine as of yet, but hope this helps. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > > From: Victor Tsaran <tsar at sylaba.poznan.pl> > > > To: Speakup List <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> > > > Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 7:26 PM > > > Subject: Strange things with my hard drive > > > > > > > > > > Hell, listers! > > > > I know some of you, especially Kerry, are big hardware specialists. > Hope you > > > > will be able to advise something for me this time as well. > > > > I am putting together a new machine. Whenever I connect the hard drive > to > > > > the IDE0 and CDROM to IDE1, both on master, I get "hard disk > failed...", but > > > > CDROM is found. However, if I connect hard drive to IDE1 and CDROM to > IDE0, > > > > both to master, then both are recognized fine. Why is this hapenning? > I > > > > tried these combinations several times, and the same result comes out. > > > > Can you suggest something? > > > > Victor > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > Speakup mailing list > > > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > > > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________ > > > Do You Yahoo!? > > > Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Speakup mailing list > > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > > > > -- > > Kerry Hoath: kerry at gotss.net kerry at gotss.eu.org or > kerry at gotss.spice.net.au > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Speakup mailing list > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > -- Kerry Hoath: kerry at gotss.net kerry at gotss.eu.org or kerry at gotss.spice.net.au
