Are IDE Cables Reversible??

[Henny]

I have some round IDE cables with three connectors. (ie Motherboard, Slave and Master).

There's a lot of slack between "motherboard" and "slave" but very little from "slave" to the end of the cable which is "master". However there's quite a bit of distance between my DVD drive (slave) and HD (master). However the DVD is very close to the MB connector.

Can the cable be reversed so that "master" goes to MB connector, "slave" goes DVD and "MB" goes to HD?

Any wiring diagrams out there???

 

[MedicBob]

I belive you can without a problem. Just make sure you use jumpers to set the drives they way you want them, 1 master and 1 slave. There should be diagrams and jumpers near the connectors on the drives.

 

[corkyg]

Yes - it will work, and so will CSEL. If using CSEL, then the black connector is in the mobo, and the blue connector is master and the gray one is slave. The wiring is the same in either direction because the connectors are keyed to only go one way.

 

[Zepper]

It may not work at full speed because the extra grounds may not be terminated properly. CS shouldn't work as CS2 isn't connected to the middle connector from the black end - both CS1 and CS2 are connected at the blue connector - there should be no contact in the gray connector for the CS1 line and there should be no contact in the black connector for the CS2 line so you should only be able to signal for CS1. Set your drives to Master and Slave and the CS lines are ignored. That may work but perhaps not at full speed.

I recommend getting a longer cable and connect it correctly. Even better, add another PATA controller channel and connect each drive to its own channel with as short a cable as will reach for best overall performance.

.bh.

 

[Henny]

Thanks. The issue is that Intel jumped the gun in anticipating acceptance of SATA and hence most modern MB's only have one IDE connector. I have a Sonata case so the DVD is at the top of the case and the HD cage is at the bottom. And most MB's have the single IDE connector at the bottom of the MB.

Unfortunately most cable don't give you much slack from slave to master yet in A Sonata case you need quite a bit.

 

[Zepper]

PCI PATA controllers are cheap but supplies seem to be drying up. Get one for your kit while you can.

.bh.

 

[13black]

You can reverse a 40 wire 40 pin ATA 66 IDE cable no problem. You can not reverse an 80 wire 40 pin ATA 100/133 IDE cable. I tried and it didn't work. The two drive connectors are wired different so that cable select will work. If you try to connect the master drive connector to the motherboard you will get a BIOS error message.