[RESOLVED] IDE cable extender

[Pogi]

Had one of those "A-HA!" moments the other day... wanted to temporarily hook up a spare HD to Ghost a customer's files, but the IDE cable was too short to reach the spare HD sitting on top of the case and there was no room in the case to mount it.

Rummaged around in the good ol' junk box and got a standard good IDE cable and a set of header pins (Radio Slack carries these, I believe). Plugged the junk-box IDE cable into the drive, then used the header pins to connect that cable to the existing IDE cable. Used a power supply Y adapter as an extension for the drive's power, set the drive's jumper appropriately, booted up and Ghosted away.

Obviously, this would work for CD-ROMs as well.

I can think of several times over the years when this would have been handy to use and could have saved me some time.

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...Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right...

[This message has been edited by Pogi (edited January 25, 2001).]

[arcade]

just cant make it longer than 18 inches i believe!?!

[StevePorter]

Yeah. Watch the length. Some drives puke if the cable exceeds 12 inches...

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Sometimes computer problems require extreme measures. Our hero, the Intrepid Spaceman Spiff, sets his blaster on "deep fat fry..."

[sebass54]

I think the "reccomended" max length for IDE cables is 19 inches.

I have seen 26 inch cables but I have also had some problems with those.

Usually you get a request for a longer cable from a retard customer who took an old Gateway server case (the 386 ones that are 5 ft tall) and put IDE drives in something that is made for SCSI...

I wouldn't use anything other than 19 inch...

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"then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel, is just a freight train coming your way..."

[captpackrat]

If you're going to use a long cable, use the 80 wire "UDMA 66/100" cables, they'll give better data integrity. But don't try it with drives running UDMA 66 or 100. Should be O.K. for CD-ROM's and the like.

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Captain Troy D. Pack Rat
`akbar Press

If you're furry and you know it, hug the mouse!

[scout970]

i'm running a pair of custom made 24" ide cables with a 9 gig seagate hd and a 12x4x32 burner on one and the other has a 10x dvd and a 52x cdrom with no problems ran across a roll of about 100' of 40conductor cable at a flea market for .25 works great

[Pogi]

The lenght of the cable can indeed be critical for some drives and/or mobo's, so I don't recommend a cable any longer than necessary for a PERMANENT hookup, but for the few times you'll need to temporarily hookup a HD or CD, it would be worth a try to see if the original suggestion will work for you.

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...Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right...