Old IDE

[underkid74]

I have 100's of IDE ribbons but i don't know how to tell what they are 133/100/66/ect.
How do i tell what from what

 

[Hawkeye22]

Older ribbons were 40 pin, but to get the higher speeds, they started using 80 pin ribbons. The 80 pin ribbons should work for all IDE. Also, even though they are 80 pin ribbons, I believe there were still 40 pins on the connectors themselves. Basically it was 2 wires per pin. This helped eliminate crosstalk and emi/rfi in order to obtain the faster speeds.

You can see a comparison of the 2 cables in the bottom picture.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCable80-c.html

 

[jsc]

80 conductor ribbons = 133.

They are backwards compatible with the old 40 line cables.

And the 40 conductor cables will work with the faster drives because the faster drives will just toggle to a lower speed.

It has also been my experience that the 80 conductor cables are a little more reliable.