Round IDE Cables

[BKraengel]

All,

Does anyone have any hands-on experience with the new Round IDE Cables that are all the rage? If anyone has the time and necessary equipment, it would be interesting to see how close the new round cables come to the Ultra133 spec. I just installed the little 10" round floppy cable and just that goes a long way to cleaning up the rats nest inside my box.

I've been hesitating to install the round IDE cables until I see some real-life performance data. I am running Ultra133 Maxtors off a Promise Ultra133 controller so I am concerned with performance.

To my way of thinking, scrunching up a flat cable defeats the whole purpose of adding the extra conductors. Adding an extra conductor between each pair of data conductors decreases cross-talk in two ways: (1) the physical separation of data conductors is increased by the width of the extra conductor, thus decreasing the coupling between data conductors, and (2) grounding the extra conductor effectively adds a shield between data conductors. Regardless of these extra conductors, if the flat cable is rounded, data conductors can lie next to each other for the length of the cable; if not side-by-side, then top-to-bottom. That would put us right back to square one.

 

[ejsmith2]

"thus decreasing the coupling between data conductors"

Yes. Just like if you pee in the Pacific Ocean, it increases the total volume. It does! (but is it significant?)

Anyway, I bought two ata-66/100 cables from plycon (?) about a year ago. They have individual wires, with a large cylindrical vinyl sheath covering them.

They are good (excellent) cables. I can't say they were worth the $15 I paid for them each, but they do massively clean up the inside of my case. I have a couple of other cheepo ata66/100 ribbon cables in there two. One was rounded with a razor blade into groups of 4 wires, and the other was just cranked down with scotch tape. They are not nearly as flexible as the plycon ones, but they do well for the short distance I need them to run. I have tested both with hdtach (about 3 weeks ago) because I was messing (read: d*cking) around with that GD 75gxp that I RMA'd back to Ibm, and I could not tell a speed difference, so I left the plycon one in place.

Btw, unless you're pumping 100cfm into your case, the rounded cables will make a cooling difference on every single component...

 

[camieabz]

Lovely analogy. I'll never look at the Pacific in the same way again.

<b><font color=blue>~scribble~</font color=blue></b> <A HREF="http://www.ud.com/home.htm" target="_new">Help cure cancer.</A>

 

[OldBear]

I am not going to swim there again.

<font color=blue>Remember.... You get what you pay for. All advice here is free.</font color=blue>

 

[Toejam31]

I've heard of some problems with cross-talk, and difficulty having all devices recognized on the IDE channels with rounded cables, especially with the stiffer, 40 pin-80 conductor ATA cables.

I tried rounding my cables earlier in the year and ended up buying new ones after I ran across a bunch of IDE controller errors. I was careful, but my system just didn't like them.

I've got a customer who purchased some fairly expensive pre-rounded cables, and he occasionally has to pop open the can and temporarily replace them with the older, flat cables. The computer won't always detect the hard drives unless the flat cables are installed. It's an intermittent problem. It's mostly irritating. I wouldn't put up with it, personally, but he likes them, both for the increased airflow, and because of how they look. They're bright, sunshiny yellow.

Toejam31

P.S. If we all drink a lot of beer, and then pee at the same time, do you think we could flood Maui? That would be significant, don't ya think?

It's Miller Time! Let's suffocate some parrot fish!

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[camieabz]

One more point. I have a half dozen of them in the house, which I used to use. I went and bought silent drive enclosures and guess what?

They can't fit on with the enclosures. I've sacrificed 2C for 2Db.

<b><font color=blue>~scribble~</font color=blue></b> <A HREF="http://www.ud.com/home.htm" target="_new">Help cure cancer.</A>

 

[mbetea]

i've rounded all four of my ata100 cables. it's pretty easy as long as you got a fresh blade. haven't experienced one "corruption" problem from day one. and that's four hdds, cdrw, dvdrom.

[insert philosophical statement here]

 

[Porkloin]

So far, so good for the premaid ones AND the home made ones that I have. The home made ones took more time to make than it was worth, but I had to give it a whirl.

Sweating like a rancid chunk of pork

 

[texas_techie]

Got some about a year ago. Connected to my master drive. No freezes, errors or anything. I recommend them