Drive connectors

I plan to move up or down the two hard drives and
two CD drives in my Win98SE PC, currently crowded
together with the data cables in a weird tangle since
otherwise not long enough . . . (also an undocumented
feature of the ASUS P4P800 SE main board, which
crowds together the IDE and floppy connector sockets.)

I was surprised to find in Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing
PCs (Que, 8th edn.) no simple instructions for drive
installation (mainly because the text has abundant detail
DOS may have required but we have now forgotten, or else
about things that never happened e.g. floptical drives.)

1. Any available 4-wire power connector can be used, right?
(I cannot imagine any reason why not.)

2. Any available audio card connector can be attached
to any CD drive I presume?

3. Does it make any difference which data cable terminal
is connected to which drive? The ASUS manual
refers to UltraDMA (brand) data cables with colour-coded
connectors, but the chap who built my PC used generic
data connectors, not thus coded. (After all each hard drive is
jumpered as eiither Master or Slave. Mueller simply does
not mention whether the Master should be on the end
connector or the intermediate one.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Any power connector can be used. However if you are using cable splitters
and/or there are multiple connectors on any set of cables, make sure you
aren't overloading any one set. Try to balance the load.

If the motherboard has more than one audio connector you need to determine
whether they are the same input or different inputs. If they are the same
(ie, the motherboard simply supports two different forms of connector for
the one audio input) then you should use one only. Connect it to the drive
you will be using for audio.

If you are configuring the drives for master/slave (rather than cable
select) and if there are two drives on the cable then which connector you
use doesn't matter. If there's only one drive the usual recommendation is
to use the end connector as this minimizes reflections.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...
I plan to move up or down the two hard drives and
two CD drives in my Win98SE PC, currently crowded
together with the data cables in a weird tangle since
otherwise not long enough . . . (also an undocumented
feature of the ASUS P4P800 SE main board, which
crowds together the IDE and floppy connector sockets.)

I was surprised to find in Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing
PCs (Que, 8th edn.) no simple instructions for drive
installation (mainly because the text has abundant detail
DOS may have required but we have now forgotten, or else
about things that never happened e.g. floptical drives.)

1. Any available 4-wire power connector can be used, right?
(I cannot imagine any reason why not.)

2. Any available audio card connector can be attached
to any CD drive I presume?

3. Does it make any difference which data cable terminal
is connected to which drive? The ASUS manual
refers to UltraDMA (brand) data cables with colour-coded
connectors, but the chap who built my PC used generic
data connectors, not thus coded. (After all each hard drive is
jumpered as eiither Master or Slave. Mueller simply does
not mention whether the Master should be on the end
connector or the intermediate one.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

ATA specification for master, whether master jumper or cable select, is at
end of the ide ribbon cable. The cable shall be 18" in length. No
allowance is made for lack of a slave. The "longer" end connects to the
motherboard or ide card. UDMA66/ATA66 or faster cache speed hard drives
require 80 wire ribbon cable, recommended otherwise for slower animals as
well.
--
Jonny


"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
Any power connector can be used. However if you are using cable splitters
and/or there are multiple connectors on any set of cables, make sure you
aren't overloading any one set. Try to balance the load.

If the motherboard has more than one audio connector you need to determine
whether they are the same input or different inputs. If they are the same
(ie, the motherboard simply supports two different forms of connector for
the one audio input) then you should use one only. Connect it to the drive
you will be using for audio.

If you are configuring the drives for master/slave (rather than cable
select) and if there are two drives on the cable then which connector you
use doesn't matter. If there's only one drive the usual recommendation is
to use the end connector as this minimizes reflections.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...
I plan to move up or down the two hard drives and
two CD drives in my Win98SE PC, currently crowded
together with the data cables in a weird tangle since
otherwise not long enough . . . (also an undocumented
feature of the ASUS P4P800 SE main board, which
crowds together the IDE and floppy connector sockets.)

I was surprised to find in Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing
PCs (Que, 8th edn.) no simple instructions for drive
installation (mainly because the text has abundant detail
DOS may have required but we have now forgotten, or else
about things that never happened e.g. floptical drives.)

1. Any available 4-wire power connector can be used, right?
(I cannot imagine any reason why not.)

2. Any available audio card connector can be attached
to any CD drive I presume?

3. Does it make any difference which data cable terminal
is connected to which drive? The ASUS manual
refers to UltraDMA (brand) data cables with colour-coded
connectors, but the chap who built my PC used generic
data connectors, not thus coded. (After all each hard drive is
jumpered as eiither Master or Slave. Mueller simply does
not mention whether the Master should be on the end
connector or the intermediate one.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)