Yes, some 40-wire cables are made for cable select, but most aren't. Those that are will be marked: Primary here, Secondary here, Mobo here (or similar) because the 40-wire CS cables were made two different ways (neither of which involves a twist ). Almost all 40-wire CS cables were OEM for one of the big box-pushers like Dell and Compaq. CS makes life easier for the bix box-pushers. ALL 80-wire cables are supposed to be CS thus the color coded connectors: blue to mobo, grey to secondary, black to primary drive. IAC, the drive jumpers definitely control what happens. If you use the M/S jumpers then the CS feature of the cables will be ignored.
. Beware some drives have TWO postitions for Master - one for Master Stand-alone, and the other for Master with Slave. These are usually WD but I have heard of others. This has caused no end of hair pulling.
. What's JP been drinking - that post is an embarrassment of errors... Has anyone ever seen a 40-wire CS cable with a twist? All 80-wire IDE cables are CS compliant - where is the twist? I don need no steenking tweest... :roll:
. The reason FD cables are usually twisted is because Floppy Drives have drive address jumpers or switches - up to four FDs could be attached to one flat cable each with a dedicated select line. The twisted FD cable was done that way because of another big box-pusher, IBM. So the drives could be set all the same way at the OEM's factory and the assemblers wouldn't have to touch the address jumpers/switches. The one on the end will be primary (A) and the one in the middle is secondary (B). More an indictment of IBM's attitude toward its assemblers than anything else.
.bh.