Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it ;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Can someone clear this up for me.
Thanks.
Bob Goodwin Zuni, Virginia
bobgoodwin kirjoitti viestissään (lähetysaika torstai, 23. helmikuuta 2006 01:48):
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
Blue connector goes to motherboard, the black connector at cable end is for the master and the grey connector in the middle is for the slave.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
You're thinking of floppy cables. IDE cables with cable select have one conductor cut or disconnected between master and slave connectors.
On Wednesday 22 February 2006 19:04, Markku Kolkka wrote:
bobgoodwin kirjoitti viestissään (lähetysaika torstai, 23.
helmikuuta 2006 01:48):
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
Blue connector goes to motherboard, the black connector at cable end is for the master and the grey connector in the middle is for the slave.
Hummm, I've been told the black end is the mobo end. Lemme look at mine.
And thats rather useless as all 6 connectors on the two 80 wire cables in my machine are black, and therefore not CS cables. So I could very possibly be wrong. And a quick search of the junkyard here did not expose a cable with multiple colored connectors. In any event, its very important for those cables which have multiple colored connectors that the correct end be plugged into the motherboard.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
You're thinking of floppy cables. IDE cables with cable select have one conductor cut or disconnected between master and slave connectors.
-- Markku Kolkka markku.kolkka@iki.fi
Gene Heskett kirjoitti viestissään (lähetysaika torstai, 23. helmikuuta 2006 03:13):
On Wednesday 22 February 2006 19:04, Markku Kolkka wrote:
Blue connector goes to motherboard, the black connector at cable end is for the master and the grey connector in the middle is for the slave.
Hummm, I've been told the black end is the mobo end. Lemme look at mine.
The color coding is specified in the ATA standard: http://t13.org/project/d1410r3b-ATA-ATAPI-6.pdf Annex A.1.2 80-conductor cable assembly using the 40-pin connector: "The System Board connector shall have a blue base and a black or blue retainer. The Device 0 Connector shall have a black base and a black retainer. The Device 1 Connector shall have a gray base and a black or gray retainer."
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 14:08 +0200, Markku Kolkka wrote:
The color coding is specified in the ATA standard: http://t13.org/project/d1410r3b-ATA-ATAPI-6.pdf Annex A.1.2 80-conductor cable assembly using the 40-pin connector: "The System Board connector shall have a blue base and a black or blue retainer. The Device 0 Connector shall have a black base and a black retainer. The Device 1 Connector shall have a gray base and a black or gray retainer."
It may be standard, but we know what (sodding) manufacturers do with standards... I've seen them with all black connectors.
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 18:48:24 -0500, bobgoodwin wrote
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it ;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Can someone clear this up for me.
Thanks.
Bob Goodwin Zuni, Virginia
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
Usually (Depending on brand of drive), the master drive is jumpered, and the slave drive isn't.
Wolf -- Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)
Wolfgang Gill wrote:
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 18:48:24 -0500, bobgoodwin wrote
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it ;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Can someone clear this up for me.
Thanks.
Bob Goodwin Zuni, Virginia
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
Usually (Depending on brand of drive), the master drive is jumpered, and the slave drive isn't.
Wolf
Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)
Ok Thanks, that saves me the trouble of further experimentation. I had done as you described, using the center connector on the master jumpered drive. This all started when one of two [both] old drives began to act up and I replaced one of them. I think I replaced the still functioning one rather than the bad one. The problem initially was intermittent and not easy for me to troubleshoot.
Bob
On Wednesday 22 February 2006 19:12, Wolfgang Gill wrote:
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 18:48:24 -0500, bobgoodwin wrote
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it ;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Can someone clear this up for me.
Thanks.
Bob Goodwin Zuni, Virginia
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
To do so is asking for data errors. In the IDE system, its assumed that the drive jumpered as master will do the termination of the cable also, and to do that properly requires that it be on the end of the cable. Any cable hanging out the far end of the signal path is an electrical mirror, which if not loaded with the cables characteristic impedance with an ohmic load, will make the edge of the data signals ring badly, possibly corrupting the data.
This is in fact almost as critical as a scsi cable setup, where the common practice is to do it right, then sacrifice something to the gods just for insurance.
Usually (Depending on brand of drive), the master drive is jumpered, and the slave drive isn't.
Wolf
Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)
On Wednesday 22 February 2006 20:21, Gene Heskett wrote:
On Wednesday 22 February 2006 19:12, Wolfgang Gill wrote:
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 18:48:24 -0500, bobgoodwin wrote
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it ;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Can someone clear this up for me.
Thanks.
Bob Goodwin Zuni, Virginia
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
To do so is asking for data errors. In the IDE system, its assumed that the drive jumpered as master will do the termination of the cable also, and to do that properly requires that it be on the end of the cable. Any cable hanging out the far end of the signal path is an electrical mirror, which if not loaded with the cables characteristic impedance with an ohmic load, will make the edge of the data signals ring badly, possibly corrupting the data.
This is in fact almost as critical as a scsi cable setup, where the common practice is to do it right, then sacrifice something to the gods just for insurance.
Usually (Depending on brand of drive), the master drive is jumpered, and the slave drive isn't.
Wolf
Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)
-- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Mine is blue, black, and gray. Blue to the mother board, black (farthest from mother board), and gray (in the middle).
Scot L. Harris wrote:
On Wed, 2006-02-22 at 21:31 -0500, jludwig wrote:
Mine is blue, black, and gray.
OUCH! That must hurt a lot. :)
Sorry, couldn't resist....
Three men were sitting together bragging about how they had given their new wives duties.
The 1st man had married an Asian woman and bragged that he had told his wife she was going to do all the dishes and house cleaning. He said it took a couple of days but on the 3rd day he came home to a clean house and the dishes were done.
The 2nd man had married a White woman. He bragged that he had given is wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes, and the cooking. On the 1st day he didn't see any results, but the next day it was better. By the 3rd day, his house was clean, the dishes were done and he had a huge dinner on the table.
The 3rd man married a Black woman. He boasted that he had told her that her duties were to keep the house clean, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed, and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the 1st day he didn't see anything, the 2nd day he didn't see anything, but by the 3rd day most of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye; enough to fix himself a bite to eat, load the dishwasher and call a landscaper.
Mike
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 11:12 +1100, Wolfgang Gill wrote:
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
That is just so much misleading, not to mention outright wrong, information. Kindly stop leading people down the garden path.
On 40-wire cables, all pins will not be wired through if it's a cable-select cable. On one plug a pin will be disconnected, on another plug a pin will be disconnected from the cable and grounded. These need to be connected properly if using cable-select, but can be used any way around if you're manually jumpering drives.
On 80-wire cables, the same applies (as above) for cable-select features, AND there's 40 other wires between the data lines that are only grounded at the motherboard end. These NEED to have the motherboard plug plugged into the motherboard, or you're risking a lot of data corruption or interface problems, but the master and slave connectors only need to be used as labelled if you're using the drives in cable-select mode.
If one is hiding parts of cables out of the way, one should be careful how it's done. Kinking or mangling cables can produce problems. If you're *never* going to use the extra length, I'd suggest just cutting it off.
Usually (Depending on brand of drive), the master drive is jumpered, and the slave drive isn't.
I wouldn't agree with that at all, I see no consistency.
On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 13:39:13 +1030, Tim wrote
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 11:12 +1100, Wolfgang Gill wrote:
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
That is just so much misleading, not to mention outright wrong, information. Kindly stop leading people down the garden path.
Misleading?? That wasn't misleading at all!! And I'M NOT leading people up the garden path. I've build literally 10,000 of machines (Probably more, lost count after the first 1000 or so). And only 1% have failed due to hardware faults, and cabling wasn't one of them. It's NO use to explain things into GREAT detail to people that have little understanding of the concepts as it is, and confuse them even more. And as I understand it, the original poster has solved it, so it not necessary to slag everyone that tries to help.
On 40-wire cables, all pins will not be wired through if it's a cable-select cable. On one plug a pin will be disconnected, on another plug a pin will be disconnected from the cable and grounded. These need to be connected properly if using cable-select, but can be used any way around if you're manually jumpering drives.
On 80-wire cables, the same applies (as above) for cable-select features, AND there's 40 other wires between the data lines that are only grounded at the motherboard end. These NEED to have the motherboard plug plugged into the motherboard, or you're risking a lot of data corruption or interface problems, but the master and slave connectors only need to be used as labelled if you're using the drives in cable-select mode.
If one is hiding parts of cables out of the way, one should be careful how it's done. Kinking or mangling cables can produce problems. If you're *never* going to use the extra length, I'd suggest just cutting it off.
Now that's the part that's misleading.. "Cut it off if you don't need it", that's a REALLY, SMART thing to say to people that bearly understand this concept at all. (**Shakes Head**)
Usually (Depending on brand of drive), the master drive is jumpered, and the slave drive isn't.
I wouldn't agree with that at all, I see no consistency.
You obviously haven't delt with different number of different brands of drives in the same system. IF you did, you'd know all about it..
-- Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)
Wolfgang Gill wrote:
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
Tim:
That is just so much misleading, not to mention outright wrong, information. Kindly stop leading people down the garden path.
Wolfgang Gill:
Misleading?? That wasn't misleading at all!! And I'M NOT leading people up the garden path.
It's completely wrong to say that all IDE 40 or 80 wire cables are wired straight through. THEY ARE NOT! Repeat after me, they are NOT *all* wired straight through. And if anything, the *majority* are not.
On any (40 or 80) that're cable-select, one wire is disconnected from one plug, and the same pin is grounded on another. That's not "straight through" wiring.
On any that're 80-wire, only 40 of the wires can be "straight through", 40 don't connect to anything other than one plug, and there's two that might be connected as above (most 80-wire cables are cable-select, I won't go as far as to say that all of them are.
So, now, tell me how that equates to being wired "straight through"?
Hint: Don't argue with an electronics engineer about basic wiring.
I've build literally 10,000 of machines (Probably more, lost count after the first 1000 or so). And only 1% have failed due to hardware faults, and cabling wasn't one of them. It's NO use to explain things into GREAT detail to people that have little understanding of the concepts as it is, and confuse them even more.
It's a very bad, VERY BAD, idea to outright lie to people. Do not tell false people information as if it were fact. Over-simplifying things to the point that they are wrong is misleading. The people who take you at face value later have to unlearn all the bad information that they found out, which is a difficult thing to do.
If one is hiding parts of cables out of the way, one should be careful how it's done. Kinking or mangling cables can produce problems. If you're *never* going to use the extra length, I'd suggest just cutting it off.
Now that's the part that's misleading.. "Cut it off if you don't need it", that's a REALLY, SMART thing to say to people that bearly understand this concept at all. (**Shakes Head**)
If you know how transmission lines work, and bear in mind the frequencies involved, taking excess cable and rolling it up, folding it up, bundling it under drives, etc., can lead to all sorts of problems.
I repeat, if you're NEVER going to use the excess, it's fine to cut it off. Doing so will do NO harm to the signalling, and can remove a plethora of wierd problems that people may encounter due to stuffing cables into any spare space.
I take comments that "I've built thousands with no problems" with a grain of salt. How many PCs get problems that the builder will never hear about? Lots. How many problems go undiagnosed? Lots. How many people magically fix their systems by fiddling with the cables? Lots.
Usually (Depending on brand of drive), the master drive is jumpered, and the slave drive isn't.
I wouldn't agree with that at all, I see no consistency.
You obviously haven't delt with different number of different brands of drives in the same system. IF you did, you'd know all about it..
I have. You've obviously dealt with too few.
I've seen drives which need no jumper for master, one jumper for it, two jumpers for it (depending on whether it was single or with a slave). I've seen slaves with one jumper, no jumper, and so on. I couldn't go around giving some assertion that it's more common for masters to be jumpered and slaves to be not, because I don't see that sort of consistency anywhere, and it's a useless thing to rely on. It's just encouraging people to make ill-considered assumptions about drives by quickly glancing at the back instead of checking out the jumpering that's actually needed by the drive.
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 18:06 +1030, Tim wrote:
Wolfgang Gill wrote:
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
Tim:
That is just so much misleading, not to mention outright wrong, information. Kindly stop leading people down the garden path.
Wolfgang Gill:
Misleading?? That wasn't misleading at all!! And I'M NOT leading people up the garden path.
It's completely wrong to say that all IDE 40 or 80 wire cables are wired straight through. THEY ARE NOT! Repeat after me, they are NOT *all* wired straight through. And if anything, the *majority* are not.
On any (40 or 80) that're cable-select, one wire is disconnected from one plug, and the same pin is grounded on another. That's not "straight through" wiring.
On any that're 80-wire, only 40 of the wires can be "straight through", 40 don't connect to anything other than one plug, and there's two that might be connected as above (most 80-wire cables are cable-select, I won't go as far as to say that all of them are.
I never said no such thing that ALL 40/80 pin IDE cables are straight through. You can´t get them off the shelf unless you specifically ask for them. Since they are the cheapest to manufacture, they will be the most likely that people will come across.
So, now, tell me how that equates to being wired "straight through"?
Hint: Don't argue with an electronics engineer about basic wiring.
More like an Electronics Engineer arguing with another Electronics engineer. (25 years in electronics/computers)
I've build literally 10,000 of machines (Probably more, lost count after the first 1000 or so). And only 1% have failed due to hardware faults, and cabling wasn't one of them. It's NO use to explain things into GREAT detail to people that have little understanding of the concepts as it is, and confuse them even more.
It's a very bad, VERY BAD, idea to outright lie to people. Do not tell false people information as if it were fact. Over-simplifying things to the point that they are wrong is misleading. The people who take you at face value later have to unlearn all the bad information that they found out, which is a difficult thing to do.
If one is hiding parts of cables out of the way, one should be careful how it's done. Kinking or mangling cables can produce problems. If you're *never* going to use the extra length, I'd suggest just cutting it off.
Now that's the part that's misleading.. "Cut it off if you don't need it", that's a REALLY, SMART thing to say to people that barely understand this concept at all. (**Shakes Head**)
If you know how transmission lines work, and bear in mind the frequencies involved, taking excess cable and rolling it up, folding it up, bundling it under drives, etc., can lead to all sorts of problems.
I repeat, if you're NEVER going to use the excess, it's fine to cut it off. Doing so will do NO harm to the signalling, and can remove a plethora of weird problems that people may encounter due to stuffing cables into any spare space.
I take comments that "I've built thousands with no problems" with a grain of salt. How many PCs get problems that the builder will never hear about? Lots. How many problems go undiagnosed? Lots. How many people magically fix their systems by fiddling with the cables? Lots.
Usually (Depending on brand of drive), the master drive is jumpered, and the slave drive isn't.
I wouldn't agree with that at all, I see no consistency.
You obviously haven't dealt with different number of different brands of drives in the same system. IF you did, you'd know all about it..
I have. You've obviously dealt with too few.
I've seen drives which need no jumper for master, one jumper for it, two jumpers for it (depending on whether it was single or with a slave). I've seen slaves with one jumper, no jumper, and so on. I couldn't go around giving some assertion that it's more common for masters to be jumpered and slaves to be not, because I don't see that sort of consistency anywhere, and it's a useless thing to rely on. It's just encouraging people to make ill-considered assumptions about drives by quickly glancing at the back instead of checking out the jumpering that's actually needed by the drive.
I never said anything along those lines either. And you don´t have to explain it to me, I´ve been there done that. And it seems that we both overlooked the fact that the original poster, was using a cable select cable. As drives jumpered as master/slave don´t function when two drives are connected to the cable.
¨;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot.¨
Enough said from me, I hate this damned arguing crap..
Wolfgang Gill wrote:
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through,
Tim:
It's completely wrong to say that all IDE 40 or 80 wire cables are wired straight through. THEY ARE NOT! Repeat after me, they are NOT *all* wired straight through. And if anything, the *majority* are not.
Wolfgang:
I never said no such thing that ALL 40/80 pin IDE cables are straight through.
Read the third sentence that you wrote, at the top of this page, a few generations back. Now don't tell me that you didn't say what I quoted you as saying.
And it seems that we both overlooked the fact that the original poster, was using a cable select cable. As drives jumpered as master/slave don´t function when two drives are connected to the cable.
You want to try that again, that's (the second one) a completely nonsensical sentence.
It does NOT matter whether a cable is a cable-select cable or not, when you jumper your drives as master and slave. They behave as master and slave, as jumpered, no matter what the cable is.
Why is it that people do not understand this? The jumpers on the drive override anything else. You have to specifically set drives into the cable-select mode for them to pay any attention to the type of cabling.
Tim wrote:
It does NOT matter whether a cable is a cable-select cable or not, when you jumper your drives as master and slave. They behave as master and slave, as jumpered, no matter what the cable is.
Why is it that people do not understand this? The jumpers on the drive override anything else. You have to specifically set drives into the cable-select mode for them to pay any attention to the type of cabling.
Well, that depends on the drive. The CS system is designed such that a drive *can* override based on jumpers, and I've never seen a drive which used the cable select to override the jumpers, and it wouldn't make sense do to so to me, but drives' incompatibilities with each other being what they are, and electronic designs and testing being what they are...
Mike
Tim:
It does NOT matter whether a cable is a cable-select cable or not, when you jumper your drives as master and slave. They behave as master and slave, as jumpered, no matter what the cable is.
Why is it that people do not understand this? The jumpers on the drive override anything else. You have to specifically set drives into the cable-select mode for them to pay any attention to the type of cabling.
Mike McCarty:
Well, that depends on the drive. The CS system is designed such that a drive *can* override based on jumpers, and I've never seen a drive which used the cable select to override the jumpers, and it wouldn't make sense do to so to me, but drives' incompatibilities with each other being what they are, and electronic designs and testing being what they are...
I did mention that all but *broken* drives would obey the jumpers. There's no sane reason for it to work any other way. The jumpers select whether the drive is master/single/slave/cable-select. If the jumpers weren't the controlling factor, you wouldn't have those options, nor be able to make them.
A drive would have to be seriously broken to override or ignore jumpers, it'd give you NO way to set what you want.
On Thursday 23 February 2006 15:16, Mike McCarty wrote:
Tim wrote:
It does NOT matter whether a cable is a cable-select cable or not, when you jumper your drives as master and slave. They behave as master and slave, as jumpered, no matter what the cable is.
Why is it that people do not understand this? The jumpers on the drive override anything else. You have to specifically set drives into the cable-select mode for them to pay any attention to the type of cabling.
Well, that depends on the drive. The CS system is designed such that a drive *can* override based on jumpers, and I've never seen a drive which used the cable select to override the jumpers, and it wouldn't make sense do to so to me, but drives' incompatibilities with each other being what they are, and electronic designs and testing being what they are...
That last sentences is just another corrolary of Murphy's Law I believe.
Mike
p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} This message made from 100% recycled bits. You have found the bank of Larn. I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you. I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!
Wolfgang wrote:
[snip]
I never said anything along those lines either. And you don´t have to explain it to me, I´ve been there done that. And it seems that we both overlooked the fact that the original poster, was using a cable select cable. As drives jumpered as master/slave don´t function when two drives are connected to the cable.
Umm, are you claiming that using a CS cable requires one to jumper the drives CS?
¨;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot.¨
Mike
On Thursday 23 February 2006 06:19, Wolfgang wrote:
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 18:06 +1030, Tim wrote:
Wolfgang Gill wrote:
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
Tim:
That is just so much misleading, not to mention outright wrong, information. Kindly stop leading people down the garden path.
Wolfgang Gill:
Misleading?? That wasn't misleading at all!! And I'M NOT leading people up the garden path.
It's completely wrong to say that all IDE 40 or 80 wire cables are wired straight through. THEY ARE NOT! Repeat after me, they are NOT *all* wired straight through. And if anything, the *majority* are not.
On any (40 or 80) that're cable-select, one wire is disconnected from one plug, and the same pin is grounded on another. That's not "straight through" wiring.
On any that're 80-wire, only 40 of the wires can be "straight through", 40 don't connect to anything other than one plug, and there's two that might be connected as above (most 80-wire cables are cable-select, I won't go as far as to say that all of them are.
I never said no such thing that ALL 40/80 pin IDE cables are straight through. You can´t get them off the shelf unless you specifically ask for them. Since they are the cheapest to manufacture, they will be the most likely that people will come across.
So, now, tell me how that equates to being wired "straight through"?
Hint: Don't argue with an electronics engineer about basic wiring.
Why not if he's possibly miss-informed?
More like an Electronics Engineer arguing with another Electronics engineer. (25 years in electronics/computers)
Now you are asking for it, I can more than double that to 55. But since I have also learned that I don't know everything, I'm more than willing to take 'corrections'.
To quote an ex motherinlaw who despite her lack of formal education, occasionally had a way with words, and one of her favorites was that so and so could paint a sign and then stand there and argue with it. You've done rather precisely that in this thread.
I've build literally 10,000 of machines (Probably more, lost count after the first 1000 or so). And only 1% have failed due to hardware faults, and cabling wasn't one of them. It's NO use to explain things into GREAT detail to people that have little understanding of the concepts as it is, and confuse them even more.
It's a very bad, VERY BAD, idea to outright lie to people. Do not tell false people information as if it were fact. Over-simplifying things to the point that they are wrong is misleading. The people who take you at face value later have to unlearn all the bad information that they found out, which is a difficult thing to do.
If one is hiding parts of cables out of the way, one should be careful how it's done. Kinking or mangling cables can produce problems. If you're *never* going to use the extra length, I'd suggest just cutting it off.
Now that's the part that's misleading.. "Cut it off if you don't need it", that's a REALLY, SMART thing to say to people that barely understand this concept at all. (**Shakes Head**)
If you know how transmission lines work, and bear in mind the frequencies involved, taking excess cable and rolling it up, folding it up, bundling it under drives, etc., can lead to all sorts of problems.
I repeat, if you're NEVER going to use the excess, it's fine to cut it off. Doing so will do NO harm to the signalling, and can remove a plethora of weird problems that people may encounter due to stuffing cables into any spare space.
I take comments that "I've built thousands with no problems" with a grain of salt. How many PCs get problems that the builder will never hear about? Lots. How many problems go undiagnosed? Lots. How many people magically fix their systems by fiddling with the cables? Lots.
Usually (Depending on brand of drive), the master drive is jumpered, and the slave drive isn't.
I wouldn't agree with that at all, I see no consistency.
You obviously haven't dealt with different number of different brands of drives in the same system. IF you did, you'd know all about it..
I have. You've obviously dealt with too few.
I've seen drives which need no jumper for master, one jumper for it, two jumpers for it (depending on whether it was single or with a slave). I've seen slaves with one jumper, no jumper, and so on. I couldn't go around giving some assertion that it's more common for masters to be jumpered and slaves to be not, because I don't see that sort of consistency anywhere, and it's a useless thing to rely on. It's just encouraging people to make ill-considered assumptions about drives by quickly glancing at the back instead of checking out the jumpering that's actually needed by the drive.
I never said anything along those lines either. And you don´t have to explain it to me, I´ve been there done that. And it seems that we both overlooked the fact that the original poster, was using a cable select cable. As drives jumpered as master/slave don´t function when two drives are connected to the cable.
¨;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot.¨
Enough said from me, I hate this damned arguing crap..
Thats why I apologized, and until now exited this thread.
Tim wrote:
Wolfgang Gill wrote:
So, now, tell me how that equates to being wired "straight through"?
Well, if a cable isn't "crossed" it's "straight-through", even if not all pins are connected.
Hint: Don't argue with an electronics engineer about basic wiring.
Not arguing, myself. But I have built a lot of different kinds of cables.
I've build literally 10,000 of machines (Probably more, lost count after the first 1000 or so). And only 1% have failed due to hardware faults, and cabling wasn't one of them. It's NO use to explain things into GREAT detail to people that have little understanding of the concepts as it is, and confuse them even more.
It's a very bad, VERY BAD, idea to outright lie to people. Do not tell
"Lie" is a very strong word in any language.
false people information as if it were fact. Over-simplifying things to the point that they are wrong is misleading. The people who take you at face value later have to unlearn all the bad information that they found out, which is a difficult thing to do.
Finding the balance between flooding a newbie with more info than he can assimilate and giving completely accurate information is a delicate operation.
If one is hiding parts of cables out of the way, one should be careful how it's done. Kinking or mangling cables can produce problems. If you're *never* going to use the extra length, I'd suggest just cutting it off.
Now that's the part that's misleading.. "Cut it off if you don't need it", that's a REALLY, SMART thing to say to people that bearly understand this concept at all. (**Shakes Head**)
If you know how transmission lines work, and bear in mind the frequencies involved, taking excess cable and rolling it up, folding it up, bundling it under drives, etc., can lead to all sorts of problems.
So can cutting it off, in my experience.
I repeat, if you're NEVER going to use the excess, it's fine to cut it off. Doing so will do NO harm to the signalling, and can remove a plethora of wierd problems that people may encounter due to stuffing cables into any spare space.
True in theory, not so true in practice. I've seen cables which were cut in this manner develop short circuits from whiskers from the stranded wires touching in weird ways which are not easily seen with the naked eye. Expecially in 80 wire cables, the stranded wire is *quite* thin. So I wouldn't recommend it for someone who had never shortened a cable before, unless he had some guidance nearby. Thinking about someone just getting out a pair of scissors or dikes and whacking away makes me cringe.
Also, it means that one cannot use CS (not that I want to) without further surgery on the cable.
I take comments that "I've built thousands with no problems" with a grain of salt. How many PCs get problems that the builder will never hear about? Lots. How many problems go undiagnosed? Lots. How many people magically fix their systems by fiddling with the cables? Lots.
True. When I have a problem with a machine, the first thing I do is remove and reseat all connectors. We used to do this regularly with the RAM on the board. Anyway, memory gets removed/reseated, and everywhere there is a significant connector it gets at least jiggled if not removed/reseated. Solves a lot of problems.
[snip]
Mike
Tim wrote:
So, now, tell me how that equates to being wired "straight through"?
Mike McCarty:
Well, if a cable isn't "crossed" it's "straight-through", even if not all pins are connected.
That's not "straight through". For it to be so, each and every wire has to connect to the same pins on each and every connector. Pin 1 to 1, pin 2 to 2, etc.
If it's not straight through on all wires, then you cannot say it's straight through. Just try using any cable that's not completely wired up, still described as being straight through, but you needed the connections that were omitted.
Granted that you probably won't *need* those wires on the IDE ribbon cable, but it's going down a very slippery slope when you start to redefine the meaning of descriptions so that the same thing means different things in different in different contexts, just because someone wants to be a pain.
It's a very bad, VERY BAD, idea to outright lie to people. Do not tell
"Lie" is a very strong word in any language.
It's an accurate one. When you tell untruths to people, you are lying. What's worse is when people don't know that you're doing so. Quite frankly, the poster went back and asserted some very wrong information, not just got it wrong.
false people information as if it were fact. Over-simplifying things to the point that they are wrong is misleading. The people who take you at face value later have to unlearn all the bad information that they found out, which is a difficult thing to do.
Finding the balance between flooding a newbie with more info than he can assimilate and giving completely accurate information is a delicate operation.
True enough, but don't mislead them. If the situation was explained properly in the first place, it wouldn't have been difficult. Now they have to wade through inaccurate, misleading, and just plain wrong answers, and the incorrect people vehemently defending their position against all the facts.
Do we dumb down everything on here? Instead of telling someone what actually to do, or how something works, just tell them do this and reboot, or re-install, like Windows?
If you know how transmission lines work, and bear in mind the frequencies involved, taking excess cable and rolling it up, folding it up, bundling it under drives, etc., can lead to all sorts of problems.
So can cutting it off, in my experience.
Considering that IDE cables come in all sorts of lengths (they're not cut to resonance), whether you alter the length of a cable, or use one with a different length, makes no difference. Making them too long *does* cause problems, and having excess cable floating about *can*.
I repeat, if you're NEVER going to use the excess, it's fine to cut it off. Doing so will do NO harm to the signalling, and can remove a plethora of wierd problems that people may encounter due to stuffing cables into any spare space.
True in theory, not so true in practice. I've seen cables which were cut in this manner develop short circuits from whiskers from the stranded wires touching in weird ways which are not easily seen with the naked eye. Expecially in 80 wire cables, the stranded wire is *quite* thin. So I wouldn't recommend it for someone who had never shortened a cable before, unless he had some guidance nearby. Thinking about someone just getting out a pair of scissors or dikes and whacking away makes me cringe.
I've not seen an 80-wire cable that uses stranded cable, it's all been solid. It's not difficult to cut ribbon cable. It's a childishly simple thing to do without any problems.
Even with stranded cable I've never even had that problem occur when quickly cutting cables to place. No inspection revealed any problems. You'd have to be a complete hack to mess this up.
I used to make custom SCSI leads all the time (they cost a fortune premade, but ribbon wire and IDC connectors are cheap, not to mention that you can make them to the precise dimensions to suit).
Also, it means that one cannot use CS (not that I want to) without further surgery on the cable.
Cable-select would be best avoided anyway. With single drives it's often necessary to set them specifically as single drives, you can't do that with any cable-select cable.
Not to mention that anybody considering doing this sort of thing ought to have enough brains to set jumpers, too. Especially considering the amount of information that's been passed around on this thread! ;-)
Tim wrote:
Tim wrote:
So, now, tell me how that equates to being wired "straight through"?
Mike McCarty:
Well, if a cable isn't "crossed" it's "straight-through", even if not all pins are connected.
That's not "straight through". For it to be so, each and every wire has to connect to the same pins on each and every connector. Pin 1 to 1, pin 2 to 2, etc.
You are using a definition of "straight through" which I have not seen rigorously enforced. Cables are generally either "straight through" or "crossed". I've seen 25 pin cables used for RS232 called "straight through" when only 3 pins were actually connected, and likewise called "crossover" when only the same three pins were connected (2,3,7).
If it's not straight through on all wires, then you cannot say it's straight through. Just try using any cable that's not completely wired up, still described as being straight through, but you needed the connections that were omitted.
"Cannot" is a very strong term, and though I have absolutely no stake in this particular outcome, since it doesn't involve me...
I'll say that you seem to be more interested in what makes you look good than what is customary usage in the industry.
Granted that you probably won't *need* those wires on the IDE ribbon cable, but it's going down a very slippery slope when you start to redefine the meaning of descriptions so that the same thing means different things in different in different contexts, just because someone wants to be a pain.
I haven't redefined anything. What I'm telling you is that I've been making cables since about 1970 or so, and I've seen cables called "straight through" when not all pins are connected. I've also seen cables described as "straight through" when not all pins *could* be connected, like when one end is 25 pin and the other end is 9 pin, and when one end is 25 pin and the other is 36 pin (Centronics).
It's a very bad, VERY BAD, idea to outright lie to people. Do not tell
"Lie" is a very strong word in any language.
It's an accurate one. When you tell untruths to people, you are lying.
No, one lies when one's intent is to decieve. Simply telling an untruth is not lying. Even telling a truth can be lying if one omits to tell all the truth but withholds key information. I suggest you get a reasonable dictionary and look up the verb. Here, I'll save you the effort:
lie (lied, lying) v.i. 1. To make untrue statements knowingly, especially with intent to deceive. 2. To give an erroneous or misleading impression: Figures do not /lie/. - v.t. 3. To bring about by lying: He /lied/ his way out of trouble.
Those are all the definitions for the verb from a 1930 page dictionary that weighs about 10 pounds and is about six inches thick that I have. So being wrong or stating an untruth is not lying.
What's worse is when people don't know that you're doing so. Quite frankly, the poster went back and asserted some very wrong information, not just got it wrong.
Yes, I saw some incorrect statements. Some of them were made by you. But I don't think you are lying.
[snip]
So can cutting it off, in my experience.
Considering that IDE cables come in all sorts of lengths (they're not cut to resonance), whether you alter the length of a cable, or use one with a different length, makes no difference. Making them too long *does* cause problems, and having excess cable floating about *can*.
I didn't see anyone say anything that could be construed as saying that an over long cable couldn't or wouldn't cause problems.
Concerning cutting them shorter, I didn't say it was difficult, I said it wasn't something I'd recommend a newbie to do.
[snip]
Also, it means that one cannot use CS (not that I want to) without further surgery on the cable.
Cable-select would be best avoided anyway. With single drives it's often necessary to set them specifically as single drives, you can't do that with any cable-select cable.
[snip]
In theory and in my experience, there is no problem using a single drive jumpered as a master on a CS capable cable. I don't like CS cables for a number of reasons, but not for this one.
This is enough of this exchange for me.
Mike
On Fri, 2006-02-24 at 11:31 +1030, Tim wrote:
Tim wrote:
So, now, tell me how that equates to being wired "straight through"?
Mike McCarty:
Well, if a cable isn't "crossed" it's "straight-through", even if not all pins are connected.
That's not "straight through". For it to be so, each and every wire has to connect to the same pins on each and every connector. Pin 1 to 1, pin 2 to 2, etc.
Sorry... Wrong answer. That is not the conventional nominclature that is used for cables, in general. What you are referring to is "fully pinned, straight through". It gets even uglier with RS-232 where a lot of DB-25 cables did NOT have all (or even MOST) of the 25 wires but were still referred to as "straight through" as opposed to "cross-over" or "null-modem" cables (I can think of a few DB-9 cables I've run into that were "straight through" but were not "fully pinned", gag...). Straight through means that every "pinned" cable is wired to the same pin, even if not all the pins are wired. Nothing is crossed or looped back.
If it's not straight through on all wires, then you cannot say it's straight through. Just try using any cable that's not completely wired up, still described as being straight through, but you needed the connections that were omitted.
Recurse to RS-232. Straight through does NOT imply straight through on all wires. If it doesn't apply for RS-232 (or RS-485, or VGA, etc, etc), why should it here. Provide supporting documentation for the claim, if you please.
Granted that you probably won't *need* those wires on the IDE ribbon cable, but it's going down a very slippery slope when you start to redefine the meaning of descriptions so that the same thing means different things in different in different contexts, just because someone wants to be a pain.
I'm using descriptions that have been in use since "Black Box" published their first catalogs and 4800 Baud synchronous modems were the cat's ass. When the the definitions change? Or are you going to claim that one definition is true for one type of cable and yet another standard applies to this type of cable. Again, documentation please... I think you are making the assumption that "straight through" implies "fully pinned" and that's in error. I have run into that over the years, but it's a mistake that can bite you when you least expect it. It's a common misconception. Certainly, since the vast majority of ribbon cables are fully pinned (it's harder to make them not be fully pinned) it's easy to see where that misconception originates.
It's a very bad, VERY BAD, idea to outright lie to people. Do not tell
"Lie" is a very strong word in any language.
It's an accurate one. When you tell untruths to people, you are lying. What's worse is when people don't know that you're doing so. Quite frankly, the poster went back and asserted some very wrong information, not just got it wrong.
Lie is inappropriate. Ignorance or misconception may be more appropriate. Then we get to debate who has the misconceptions.
: - Remaining cruft deleted...
Regards, Mike
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 17:03 +1100, Wolfgang Gill wrote:
On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 13:39:13 +1030, Tim wrote
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 11:12 +1100, Wolfgang Gill wrote:
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
That is just so much misleading, not to mention outright wrong, information. Kindly stop leading people down the garden path.
Misleading?? That wasn't misleading at all!! And I'M NOT leading people up the garden path. I've build literally 10,000 of machines (Probably more, lost count after the first 1000 or so). And only 1% have failed due to hardware faults, and cabling wasn't one of them. It's NO use to explain things into GREAT detail to people that have little understanding of the concepts as it is, and confuse them even more. And as I understand it, the original poster has solved it, so it not necessary to slag everyone that tries to help.
I'd have to agree that you were misleading.
I used to leave the disk on the middle connector and then stuff the last connector somewhere out of sight. That works really bad. I detected how bad it was when a linux machine continuously complained about ECC errors on the cable. After connecting the disk to the last connector it was just fine (After recommendation from linux-ide ppls).
This also seemed to improve disk throughput on some machines, since they seemingly had to cut down to udma-33 speeds OR retransmit silently in order to maintain signal integrity. This does not happen in all cases but doing it right hasn't failed yet.
-HK
Wolfgang Gill wrote:
On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 13:39:13 +1030, Tim wrote
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 11:12 +1100, Wolfgang Gill wrote:
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
That is just so much misleading, not to mention outright wrong, information. Kindly stop leading people down the garden path.
Misleading?? That wasn't misleading at all!! And I'M NOT leading people up the garden path. I've build literally 10,000 of machines (Probably more, lost
Hmm. Lessee, working 333 1/3 days per year, that's 3 years for 1000 days. So, you've been building one machine per day for the last 30 years. No, you've been building ten machines a day for the last 3 years, not taking weekends off.
Hmm. Pretty busy lately?
count after the first 1000 or so). And only 1% have failed due to hardware faults, and cabling wasn't one of them. It's NO use to explain things into GREAT detail to people that have little understanding of the concepts as it is, and confuse them even more. And as I understand it, the original poster has solved it, so it not necessary to slag everyone that tries to help.
Well, ok, fine. Let's not get personal here. This is degenerating into a Flammfest.
[snip]
Mike
Tim wrote:
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 11:12 +1100, Wolfgang Gill wrote:
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector, and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
That is just so much misleading, not to mention outright wrong, information. Kindly stop leading people down the garden path.
On 40-wire cables, all pins will not be wired through if it's a cable-select cable. On one plug a pin will be disconnected, on another
I've never seen a 40 pin CS cable.
plug a pin will be disconnected from the cable and grounded. These need to be connected properly if using cable-select, but can be used any way around if you're manually jumpering drives.
This is true in theory, and in my experience in practice, and superior IMO to using CS.
On 80-wire cables, the same applies (as above) for cable-select features, AND there's 40 other wires between the data lines that are only grounded at the motherboard end. These NEED to have the motherboard plug plugged into the motherboard, or you're risking a lot of data corruption or interface problems, but the master and slave connectors only need to be used as labelled if you're using the drives in cable-select mode.
If one is hiding parts of cables out of the way, one should be careful how it's done. Kinking or mangling cables can produce problems. If you're *never* going to use the extra length, I'd suggest just cutting it off.
Umm, won't work if using CS, because the middle connector is the "slave". But I sure wouldn't leave a bunch of cable dangling after a connector.
Mike
Wolfgang Gill wrote:
Nope it doesn't matter. Drive selects are done with jumpers on the drive. All IDE 40/80 pin cables are straight through, so the drive itself govens whether it's master or slave. When I only have one drive, I use the middle connector,
You were ok up to here.
and hide the other one out of the way, to give me better casing air flow.
And ringing on the cable. Don't do that. If you want to shorten the cable, that's fine, but don't leave it unterminated that way.
Mike
On Wednesday 22 February 2006 18:48, bobgoodwin wrote:
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
Then you have an ata100 or faster cable. And yes, in many cases, the drives position on the cable is important. As in scsi systems, the last drive on the cable must assume that its job is to terminate the cable and try, by the termination enabled when is either jumpered as Master, or is in CS mode and the last drive, to absorb the echos from the signal transitions. By playing mix and match, possibly with the drive thats functioning in master mode, on the middle connector, and a drive set as slave on the end connector, you are just asking for data integrity problems. The signal edges under those conditions will ring like a bell causeing data errors galore.
Also, if the cable is a cable select cable, as evidenced by having a black connector on what should be the motherboard and, and 2 other colors are used for the other two connectors, then the drives should be jumpered for CS, and the master drive must be on the far end of the cable.
Also as a reference, these 80 pin cables should NEVER be turned end for end, as its only the black connector that is suppposed to be plugged into the motherboard that has the proper grounding connected to the alternate wires in that 80 conductor cable, thereby serving as interconductor shielding by haveing a grounded wire between each active wire, thereby reducing crosstalk by a considerable amount.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Untrue, that is used only rarely even in the scsi world.
Can someone clear this up for me.
Thanks.
Bob Goodwin Zuni, Virginia
Gene Heskett wrote:
On Wednesday 22 February 2006 18:48, bobgoodwin wrote:
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
Then you have an ata100 or faster cable. And yes, in many cases, the drives position on the cable is important. As in scsi systems, the last drive on the cable must assume that its job is to terminate the cable and try, by the termination enabled when is either jumpered as Master, or is in CS mode and the last drive, to absorb the echos from the signal transitions. By playing mix and match, possibly with the drive thats functioning in master mode, on the middle connector, and a drive set as slave on the end connector, you are just asking for data integrity problems. The signal edges under those conditions will ring like a bell causeing data errors galore.
Also, if the cable is a cable select cable, as evidenced by having a black connector on what should be the motherboard and, and 2 other colors are used for the other two connectors, then the drives should be jumpered for CS, and the master drive must be on the far end of the cable.
Also as a reference, these 80 pin cables should NEVER be turned end for end, as its only the black connector that is suppposed to be plugged into the motherboard that has the proper grounding connected to the alternate wires in that 80 conductor cable, thereby serving as interconductor shielding by haveing a grounded wire between each active wire, thereby reducing crosstalk by a considerable amount.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Untrue, that is used only rarely even in the scsi world.
Can someone clear this up for me.
Thanks.
Bob Goodwin Zuni, Virginia
Ok, I'm glad I asked that question. It clears up some gaps in my knowledge, I hadn't considered the effect of unterminated lines on fast pulses but that would be a reason for always connecting both ends of the cable, leaving one end free, using the center connection only would leave a bunch of unterminated stubs which might cause some ringing.
I did not realize that alternate wires were grounded either ...
Anyway thanks to all.
Bob Goodwin
Gene Heskett wrote:
On Wednesday 22 February 2006 18:48, bobgoodwin wrote:
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
Then you have an ata100 or faster cable. And yes, in many cases, the drives position on the cable is important. As in scsi systems, the last drive on the cable must assume that its job is to terminate the cable and try, by the termination enabled when is either jumpered as Master, or is in CS mode and the last drive, to absorb the echos from the signal transitions. By playing mix and match, possibly with the drive thats functioning in master mode, on the middle connector, and a drive set as slave on the end connector, you are just asking for data integrity problems. The signal edges under those conditions will ring like a bell causeing data errors galore.
Also, if the cable is a cable select cable, as evidenced by having a black connector on what should be the motherboard and, and 2 other colors are used for the other two connectors, then the drives should be jumpered for CS, and the master drive must be on the far end of the cable.
Just jumping in here. It may be different where you guys are, but here in Australia the motherboard side is typically BLUE. The master BLACK and the slave GRAY. I have a bag of close to 100 of them sitting here (useless now with the advent of SATA, but such is life...anyone want them? - going very cheap :)). If the colours ARE different over there, it should still be fairly easy to tell. There are typically two connectors closer together than the third. The end with the connector that is far away goes into the motherboard.
Also as a reference, these 80 pin cables should NEVER be turned end for end, as its only the black connector that is suppposed to be plugged into the motherboard that has the proper grounding connected to the alternate wires in that 80 conductor cable, thereby serving as interconductor shielding by haveing a grounded wire between each active wire, thereby reducing crosstalk by a considerable amount.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Untrue, that is used only rarely even in the scsi world.
Can someone clear this up for me.
Thanks.
Bob Goodwin Zuni, Virginia
I have to agree...on my old IDE cable, the motherboard end is blue, the other end is black and the middle is gray. My current IDE cables are round and labeled with paper, I think all the ends are black..I can't really tell right now. And about how to plug them in, you can either fiddle with jumpering and such, or just use cable select. I haven't encountered any non-cable select IDE cables in computers I've worked on, that I know of or care about at least. Maybe an old computer that only had one hard drive anyway. Just jumper each drive to cable select, master on the end, slave on the second one, no hassles.
Edward Dekkers wrote:
Gene Heskett wrote:
On Wednesday 22 February 2006 18:48, bobgoodwin wrote:
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
Then you have an ata100 or faster cable. And yes, in many cases, the drives position on the cable is important. As in scsi systems, the last drive on the cable must assume that its job is to terminate the cable and try, by the termination enabled when is either jumpered as Master, or is in CS mode and the last drive, to absorb the echos from the signal transitions. By playing mix and match, possibly with the drive thats functioning in master mode, on the middle connector, and a drive set as slave on the end connector, you are just asking for data integrity problems. The signal edges under those conditions will ring like a bell causeing data errors galore.
Also, if the cable is a cable select cable, as evidenced by having a black connector on what should be the motherboard and, and 2 other colors are used for the other two connectors, then the drives should be jumpered for CS, and the master drive must be on the far end of the cable.
Just jumping in here. It may be different where you guys are, but here in Australia the motherboard side is typically BLUE. The master BLACK and the slave GRAY. I have a bag of close to 100 of them sitting here (useless now with the advent of SATA, but such is life...anyone want them? - going very cheap :)). If the colours ARE different over there, it should still be fairly easy to tell. There are typically two connectors closer together than the third. The end with the connector that is far away goes into the motherboard.
Also as a reference, these 80 pin cables should NEVER be turned end for end, as its only the black connector that is suppposed to be plugged into the motherboard that has the proper grounding connected to the alternate wires in that 80 conductor cable, thereby serving as interconductor shielding by haveing a grounded wire between each active wire, thereby reducing crosstalk by a considerable amount.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Untrue, that is used only rarely even in the scsi world.
Can someone clear this up for me.
Thanks.
Bob Goodwin Zuni, Virginia
bobgoodwin:
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
Gene Heskett:
Then you have an ata100 or faster cable. And yes, in many cases, the drives position on the cable is important. As in scsi systems, the last drive on the cable must assume that its job is to terminate the cable and try, by the termination enabled when is either jumpered as Master, or is in CS mode and the last drive, to absorb the echos from the signal transitions.
I've never heard of IDE using termination (despite understanding why transmission lines need proper termination). There are no termination options on IDE drives, they seem to rely on tolerance (cable length being severely limited, nominal expected impedances for interfaces, etc). Master and slave dates back to when the master drive controlled the slave drive (the host didn't control both drives).
Also, if the cable is a cable select cable, as evidenced by having a black connector on what should be the motherboard and, and 2 other colors are used for the other two connectors, then the drives should be jumpered for CS, and the master drive must be on the far end of the cable.
You do NOT NEED to use cable-select cables *as* cable-select cables, that's optional. You *can* do so, you do not *have* to do so.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Untrue, that is used only rarely even in the scsi world.
I've never seen a SCSI cable with crossed wiring. Do you have an example?
Tim wrote:
Gene Heskett:
Then you have an ata100 or faster cable. And yes, in many cases, the drives position on the cable is important. As in scsi systems, the last drive on the cable must assume that its job is to terminate the cable and try, by the termination enabled when is either jumpered as Master, or is in CS mode and the last drive, to absorb the echos from the signal transitions.
I've never heard of IDE using termination (despite understanding why
I suppose you mean ATA. Even the old MFM drives used termination, as do floppies.
transmission lines need proper termination). There are no termination options on IDE drives, they seem to rely on tolerance (cable length
Yes, there are.
being severely limited, nominal expected impedances for interfaces, etc). Master and slave dates back to when the master drive controlled the slave drive (the host didn't control both drives).
[snip]
I've never seen a SCSI cable with crossed wiring. Do you have an example?
Impossible. SCSI uses non-physical addressing, unlike ATA.
Mike
Tim:
I've never heard of IDE using termination (despite understanding why
Mike McCarty:
I suppose you mean ATA. Even the old MFM drives used termination, as do floppies.
transmission lines need proper termination). There are no termination options on IDE drives, they seem to rely on tolerance (cable length
Yes, there are.
Show me one where you select/enable/disable termination in some way or another. I've never seen an IDE drive with any *options* for controlling termination. Keyword being *options* (as in something that you control).
I won't argue that they don't need termination, but I'll say that it's not an option, the drives and hosts are designed with what they need as-is. Which goes some way to explaining why you can't use long cables, you can't terminate drives optimally for how you've cabled them (one or two drives), what they have has to work whether there's an extra drive in the middle of the cable or not.
Ages ago I waded through the specs IDE/ATA, whatever you want to call it, and don't recall user-configurable termination being discussed, either.
On Fri, 2006-02-24 at 11:54 +1030, Tim wrote:
Tim:
I've never heard of IDE using termination (despite understanding why
Mike McCarty:
I suppose you mean ATA. Even the old MFM drives used termination, as do floppies.
transmission lines need proper termination). There are no termination options on IDE drives, they seem to rely on tolerance (cable length
Yes, there are.
Show me one where you select/enable/disable termination in some way or another. I've never seen an IDE drive with any *options* for controlling termination. Keyword being *options* (as in something that you control).
Not all termination needs to be optional. A lot of SCSI controllers handle it automatically (drives are another matter, although some single-ended SCSI drives did pull it off).
I won't argue that they don't need termination, but I'll say that it's not an option, the drives and hosts are designed with what they need as-is. Which goes some way to explaining why you can't use long cables, you can't terminate drives optimally for how you've cabled them (one or two drives), what they have has to work whether there's an extra drive in the middle of the cable or not.
Just because it's "not an option" it doesn't mean it's not there. It can easily be active termination which is tolerant of over termination or some other form of compromise, overdamped, termination which doesn't severely impact a short cable with few devices at the frequencies in question.
Ages ago I waded through the specs IDE/ATA, whatever you want to call it, and don't recall user-configurable termination being discussed, either.
Nobody said anything about "user-configurable termination". Not all termination has to be "user-configurable". Especially with short cables that are reasonably damped. With a drive on one end and a controller on the other, you can be slightly underdamped and have no ill effect (having done this, designing some proprietary mirroring controllers years ago). Then, a second drive in the middle will introduce some reflection and result in the cable being slightly over damped but, still, the ringing is within acceptable limits. It's actually pretty easy to do with active termination and a limit of three devices (two drives and a controller) on a reasonably short cable. It can get out of hand if you put the lone drive in the middle and THEN you have a complete OPEN at the far end. That then forms a stub resonator that can ring like the bells of St Mary. Sometimes it will work (if you are at a reasonable spot in the middle of the cable) and sometimes it won't. With slight underdamping of the cable by the two device, you stand a pretty good shot of it working, just no guarantees.
Generally, with two devices, one at each end of a short cable, that's the easy part of getting cables and signals to behave and you can be really tolerant of mismatches in that case. For IDE/ATA the case you need to optimize for would be the three device case, where you have a disturber in the middle. Get that right and the two device at the ends case is a no-brainer even without "user-configurable" terminations. This isn't SCSI where you can have 3 meters of cable with 16 devices on the cable.
Mike
Gene Heskett wrote:
Also, if the cable is a cable select cable, as evidenced by having a black connector on what should be the motherboard and, and 2 other colors are used for the other two connectors, then the drives should be jumpered for CS, and the master drive must be on the far end of the cable.
"Should be jumpered" for CS a bit strong. I'd say "may". I don't have any machines which use CS, and I do have a few CS cables. And I think you have the colors mixed up. IIRC, the blue end is for the MB.
Also as a reference, these 80 pin cables should NEVER be turned end for end, as its only the black connector that is suppposed to be plugged into the motherboard that has the proper grounding connected to the alternate wires in that 80 conductor cable, thereby serving as interconductor shielding by haveing a grounded wire between each active wire, thereby reducing crosstalk by a considerable amount.
Other than getting the color wrong, this is also good advice. Have you checked your setup?
Mike
On Wed, 2006-02-22 at 18:48 -0500, bobgoodwin wrote:
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives?
Probably...
If you're using cable-select (because you've jumpered your drives to do so), then yes - each connector needs to go to the right place. But if you're not, and it's a 40-wire cable, you can use it in any orientation.
If you're using an 80-wire cable, then at least one plug has to go into the right place, the others depend on whether you're using cable-select (which is *completely* optional). If you're using cable-select, then you need to plug the drives into the right plugs; but if you're not, it doesn't matter.
In general, the motherboard connector is the one plug that is furthest from the other two plugs, it's often blue. In general, the master drive plug is on the other end of the cable. In general, the slave drive plug is near the middle but closer to one end (the master).
e.g. HOST --------------------------------- SLAVE ------ MASTER
This technique of working out which plug is which seems more reliable than colours, and can be done by feel when you can't see colours very well. Sometimes you can also see a cut in the cable around the middle connector, but some cable-select cables break the connection in the plugs.
Cable-select is COMPLETELY optional. You don't have to use it. I've *never* seen any case where it was required. And the only time where you might be forced to use it is would be with broken hardware, but consider that if you've got one thing broken, what else is there going to be to give you grief?
I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
Yes, as already said, they're ground wires, connected only at the motherboard plug, and they need to be connected at the motherboard side.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it ;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
If you jumper one drive as slave, the other as master, and have at least the motherboard end of an 80-wire cable plugged into the motherboard, it won't matter which connector you plug into which drive.
Does this other drive work when connected alone? Does the BIOS recognise it as a drive with the right sizes, even if nothing further happens (this test should work, even on an empty drive). If not, it might be too big for your BIOS to recognise.
You could have a broken cable, or a duff drive, too.
Some combinations of drives don't work together, though I've not seen that happen in a long time.
bobgoodwin wrote:
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives? I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
If you have more wires than pins, you almost surely have a CABLE SELECT cable. In fact, if your cable is less than five years old, you probably have CS. Which end goes where depends on how you jumper your hard drives.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it
If you use M/S jumpering on the drives, then in theory it doesn't matter where you connect them.
;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Not crossed. For CS, the drives have resistive pull-ups on them. The MB pulls down one line. The wire to this line is *severed* as the slave connector, so the "master" sees a high, while the "slave" sees a low on this pin. (The MB may have a pull-up and the drives a pull-down, I forget the polarity.)
Floppies have a "twist" in their cables, not hard drives.
Can someone clear this up for me.
HTH
Mike
Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives? I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
If you have more wires than pins, you almost surely have a CABLE SELECT cable. In fact, if your cable is less than five years old, you probably have CS. Which end goes where depends on how you jumper your hard drives.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it
If you use M/S jumpering on the drives, then in theory it doesn't matter where you connect them.
Except it appears to me that it matters as far as terminating the line properly is concerned. Ideally it would seem the termination should be at the far end where the master is connected to avoid the possibility of a mismatch at the end of the stub that would result if the slave is at the far end. How much ringing might occur and the severity of it's effect is an unknown? It would be interesting if I could get into the circuit and poke around with a scope probe ...
;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Not crossed. For CS, the drives have resistive pull-ups on them. The MB pulls down one line. The wire to this line is *severed* as the slave connector, so the "master" sees a high, while the "slave" sees a low on this pin. (The MB may have a pull-up and the drives a pull-down, I forget the polarity.)
If the h/d manufacturer provided this explanation this thread would never have started. I would have never asked any questions. It appears that I probably have cable select which I will try here in a little while. The drives can be jumpered for CS and I have 80 wire ribbon cables so it appears that should work if I understand everything I've read here? It would be helpful if the user knew that he was dealing with a c/s cable, there is no mark apparently other than the fact that there are more wires than connector pins to tie them to?
Floppies have a "twist" in their cables, not hard drives.
Can someone clear this up for me.
HTH
Mike
bobgoodwin wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
[snip]
If you use M/S jumpering on the drives, then in theory it doesn't matter where you connect them.
Except it appears to me that it matters as far as terminating the line properly is concerned. Ideally it would seem the termination should be at the far end where the master is connected to avoid the possibility of a mismatch at the end of the stub that would result if the slave is at the far end. How much ringing might occur and the severity of it's effect is an unknown? It would be interesting if I could get into the circuit and poke around with a scope probe ...
Agreed.
[snip]
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Not crossed. For CS, the drives have resistive pull-ups on them. The MB pulls down one line. The wire to this line is *severed* as the slave connector, so the "master" sees a high, while the "slave" sees a low on this pin. (The MB may have a pull-up and the drives a pull-down, I forget the polarity.)
If the h/d manufacturer provided this explanation this thread would never have started. I would have never asked any questions. It appears
Well, just how much of the interface should they document? Each pin? Just the Cable Select pin?
that I probably have cable select which I will try here in a little while. The drives can be jumpered for CS and I have 80 wire ribbon cables so it appears that should work if I understand everything I've read here? It would be helpful if the user knew that he was dealing with a c/s cable, there is no mark apparently other than the fact that there are more wires than connector pins to tie them to?
Color of the connectors. Usually non-CS cables use just one color of connector, presumably because they can get better volume prices that way. CS cables are supposed to use blue for the MB connector, black for "master" and grey for "slave", IIRC.
Mike
Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
[snip]
If you use M/S jumpering on the drives, then in theory it doesn't matter where you connect them.
Except it appears to me that it matters as far as terminating the line properly is concerned. Ideally it would seem the termination should be at the far end where the master is connected to avoid the possibility of a mismatch at the end of the stub that would result if the slave is at the far end. How much ringing might occur and the severity of it's effect is an unknown? It would be interesting if I could get into the circuit and poke around with a scope probe ...
Agreed.
[snip]
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Not crossed. For CS, the drives have resistive pull-ups on them. The MB pulls down one line. The wire to this line is *severed* as the slave connector, so the "master" sees a high, while the "slave" sees a low on this pin. (The MB may have a pull-up and the drives a pull-down, I forget the polarity.)
If the h/d manufacturer provided this explanation this thread would never have started. I would have never asked any questions. It appears
Well, just how much of the interface should they document? Each pin? Just the Cable Select pin?
that I probably have cable select which I will try here in a little while. The drives can be jumpered for CS and I have 80 wire ribbon cables so it appears that should work if I understand everything I've read here? It would be helpful if the user knew that he was dealing with a c/s cable, there is no mark apparently other than the fact that there are more wires than connector pins to tie them to?
Color of the connectors. Usually non-CS cables use just one color of connector, presumably because they can get better volume prices that way. CS cables are supposed to use blue for the MB connector, black for "master" and grey for "slave", IIRC.
Mike
Ok, I jumpered the drives c/s and the computer can deal with that. As long as the one set up for FC4 is on the master connector it boots and I can see the second drive.
The problem arose from the fact that I suspected an intermittent drive problem. Apparently the failure was on the Windows drive while I was only using FC4 and MySql! I ran smartctl and it indicated that both drives had a lot of use on them. One looked like more than four years power on time! I assumed it was the bad drive and rep[laced it with another low time drive I had and then I began to have trouble. The computer would not boot no matter what I tried.
Now I pulled the one I thought to be usable [but is bad, I just tried it again] and replaced it with the "bad" drive I had set aside and the computer will boot FC4 with that drive plugged into the c/s master connector. Hwbrowser and fdisk show both drives. So next to start over and install W2k on the other drive, I guess Windows will want to be the master and I will most likely wind up reinstalling FC4 with grub in the MBR on the Windows drive.
If nothing else I have learned something about configuring hd and their jumpers ...
The information has been helpful and appreciated.
BobG
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 17:41 -0500, bobgoodwin wrote:
The problem arose from the fact that I suspected an intermittent drive problem. Apparently the failure was on the Windows drive while I was only using FC4 and MySql! I ran smartctl and it indicated that both drives had a lot of use on them. One looked like more than four years power on time! I assumed it was the bad drive and replaced it with another low time drive I had and then I began to have trouble. The computer would not boot no matter what I tried.
Don't worry, too much, about drive having a lot of run time. Some have very long lives. And having said that, some very new drives can fail very quickly. It's not without reason some manufacturers reduced their warranty periods (they *expect* those ones to fail sooner, and don't want to replace drives).
There are other things which assess the quality of the drive operation, and I'd pay more attention to them. I'd be considering the run-life of a drive depending on how much more time I hoped to get out of the drive, rather than presuming it's not going to be very good.
On Thursday 23 February 2006 20:18, Tim wrote:
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 17:41 -0500, bobgoodwin wrote:
The problem arose from the fact that I suspected an intermittent drive problem. Apparently the failure was on the Windows drive while I was only using FC4 and MySql! I ran smartctl and it indicated that both drives had a lot of use on them. One looked like more than four years power on time! I assumed it was the bad drive and replaced it with another low time drive I had and then I began to have trouble. The computer would not boot no matter what I tried.
Don't worry, too much, about drive having a lot of run time. Some have very long lives. And having said that, some very new drives can fail very quickly. It's not without reason some manufacturers reduced their warranty periods (they *expect* those ones to fail sooner, and don't want to replace drives).
There are other things which assess the quality of the drive operation, and I'd pay more attention to them. I'd be considering the run-life of a drive depending on how much more time I hoped to get out of the drive, rather than presuming it's not going to be very good.
Bear in mind also that its often not the total power on hours a drive has logged that is the important item.
Operating temps over 40C, and the number of times its been spun down and back up are often many times more important than power on hours.
Elevated operating temps will evaporate the lubricants in the motor, 40C and lower prefered (but not too cold, I lost a linux install earlier this winter due to low temps in my unheated workshop) and the number of times the head has actually touched the disk as the bournalli(sp) effect goes away on powerdown, or builds to the point the head is floating on a film of air as the drive starts up again. This is the primary reason that when a disk senses a powerdown, it will often short circuit the motor using a bit of the energy the coasting motor generates in order to apply the brakes and get the disk stopped as quickly as it can.
I've even heard on old 7130s Maxtor actually slam on the brakes mechanically and stop in about 1/2 a second, about 2 seconds after the power was switched off. That drive lasted well over 10 years, and several thousand power off cycles before it finally succumbed to stiction, but its as good as ever if I give it a twisting on the axis of the disk bump at the same time as its powered up. It was used on my trs-80 Color Computer 3 from about 1988 till last year when I replaced it with an equally hockey puckish Seagate Hawk of 1GB, a truely monster drive for that machine.
So power on hours isn't the best way to estimate what condition the drive is in, its much more related to how its been treated over its history. Throw in the mechanical beating a portables drive can be subjected to just to toss in yet another random variable and it becomes a prediction not even your favorite medium will make...
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 17:41 -0500, bobgoodwin wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
[snip]
If you use M/S jumpering on the drives, then in theory it doesn't matter where you connect them.
Except it appears to me that it matters as far as terminating the line properly is concerned. Ideally it would seem the termination should be at the far end where the master is connected to avoid the possibility of a mismatch at the end of the stub that would result if the slave is at the far end. How much ringing might occur and the severity of it's effect is an unknown? It would be interesting if I could get into the circuit and poke around with a scope probe ...
Agreed.
[snip]
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Not crossed. For CS, the drives have resistive pull-ups on them. The MB pulls down one line. The wire to this line is *severed* as the slave connector, so the "master" sees a high, while the "slave" sees a low on this pin. (The MB may have a pull-up and the drives a pull-down, I forget the polarity.)
If the h/d manufacturer provided this explanation this thread would never have started. I would have never asked any questions. It appears
Well, just how much of the interface should they document? Each pin? Just the Cable Select pin?
that I probably have cable select which I will try here in a little while. The drives can be jumpered for CS and I have 80 wire ribbon cables so it appears that should work if I understand everything I've read here? It would be helpful if the user knew that he was dealing with a c/s cable, there is no mark apparently other than the fact that there are more wires than connector pins to tie them to?
Color of the connectors. Usually non-CS cables use just one color of connector, presumably because they can get better volume prices that way. CS cables are supposed to use blue for the MB connector, black for "master" and grey for "slave", IIRC.
Mike
Ok, I jumpered the drives c/s and the computer can deal with that. As long as the one set up for FC4 is on the master connector it boots and I can see the second drive.
The problem arose from the fact that I suspected an intermittent drive problem. Apparently the failure was on the Windows drive while I was only using FC4 and MySql! I ran smartctl and it indicated that both drives had a lot of use on them. One looked like more than four years power on time! I assumed it was the bad drive and rep[laced it with another low time drive I had and then I began to have trouble. The computer would not boot no matter what I tried.
Now I pulled the one I thought to be usable [but is bad, I just tried it again] and replaced it with the "bad" drive I had set aside and the computer will boot FC4 with that drive plugged into the c/s master connector. Hwbrowser and fdisk show both drives. So next to start over and install W2k on the other drive, I guess Windows will want to be the master and I will most likely wind up reinstalling FC4 with grub in the MBR on the Windows drive.
Windows *prefers* to be the master. It should be the only drive in place when you do the install.
Grub has options that allow the use of a windows drive as the slave with your fedora drive as the master. (see the map and chainloader commands).
If nothing else I have learned something about configuring hd and their jumpers ...
The information has been helpful and appreciated.
BobG
On Thursday 23 February 2006 16:18, Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
[snip]
If you use M/S jumpering on the drives, then in theory it doesn't matter where you connect them.
Except it appears to me that it matters as far as terminating the line properly is concerned. Ideally it would seem the termination should be at the far end where the master is connected to avoid the possibility of a mismatch at the end of the stub that would result if the slave is at the far end. How much ringing might occur and the severity of it's effect is an unknown? It would be interesting if I could get into the circuit and poke around with a scope probe ...
Agreed.
[snip]
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Not crossed. For CS, the drives have resistive pull-ups on them. The MB pulls down one line. The wire to this line is *severed* as the slave connector, so the "master" sees a high, while the "slave" sees a low on this pin. (The MB may have a pull-up and the drives a pull-down, I forget the polarity.)
If the h/d manufacturer provided this explanation this thread would never have started. I would have never asked any questions. It appears
Well, just how much of the interface should they document? Each pin? Just the Cable Select pin?
that I probably have cable select which I will try here in a little while. The drives can be jumpered for CS and I have 80 wire ribbon cables so it appears that should work if I understand everything I've read here? It would be helpful if the user knew that he was dealing with a c/s cable, there is no mark apparently other than the fact that there are more wires than connector pins to tie them to?
Color of the connectors. Usually non-CS cables use just one color of connector, presumably because they can get better volume prices that way. CS cables are supposed to use blue for the MB connector, black for "master" and grey for "slave", IIRC.
And someone else quoted the last two in reverse. Can someone PLEASE go get one of these friggin cables and settle the argument? Good color vision required of course :)
Mike
p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} This message made from 100% recycled bits. You have found the bank of Larn. I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you. I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!
Gene Heskett wrote:
And someone else quoted the last two in reverse. Can someone PLEASE go get one of these friggin cables and settle the argument? Good color vision required of course :)
I just pulled a draft copy of the ANSI ATAPI document off the web, and this is the wording...
The connector in the center of the cable assembly labeled Device 1 Connector is optional. The System Board connector shall have a blue base and a black or blue retainer. The Device 0 Connector shall have a black base and a black retainer. The Device 1 Connector shall have a gray base and a black or gray retainer.
And if that's not good enough for you, a couple of months ago I bought a brand new cable, and the connectors are MB blue with black retainer, Slave grey with black retainer (grey is same color as the cable) and the Master is black with a black retainer.
Mike
On Thursday 23 February 2006 21:35, Gene Heskett wrote:
On Thursday 23 February 2006 16:18, Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
[snip]
If you use M/S jumpering on the drives, then in theory it doesn't matter where you connect them.
Except it appears to me that it matters as far as terminating the line properly is concerned. Ideally it would seem the termination should be at the far end where the master is connected to avoid the possibility of a mismatch at the end of the stub that would result if the slave is at the far end. How much ringing might occur and the severity of it's effect is an unknown? It would be interesting if I could get into the circuit and poke around with a scope probe ...
Agreed.
[snip]
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Not crossed. For CS, the drives have resistive pull-ups on them. The MB pulls down one line. The wire to this line is *severed* as the slave connector, so the "master" sees a high, while the "slave" sees a low on this pin. (The MB may have a pull-up and the drives a pull-down, I forget the polarity.)
If the h/d manufacturer provided this explanation this thread would never have started. I would have never asked any questions. It appears
Well, just how much of the interface should they document? Each pin? Just the Cable Select pin?
that I probably have cable select which I will try here in a little while. The drives can be jumpered for CS and I have 80 wire ribbon cables so it appears that should work if I understand everything I've read here? It would be helpful if the user knew that he was dealing with a c/s cable, there is no mark apparently other than the fact that there are more wires than connector pins to tie them to?
Color of the connectors. Usually non-CS cables use just one color of connector, presumably because they can get better volume prices that way. CS cables are supposed to use blue for the MB connector, black for "master" and grey for "slave", IIRC.
And someone else quoted the last two in reverse. Can someone PLEASE go get one of these friggin cables and settle the argument? Good color vision required of course :)
Ok I just took the place apart, and the only two cables I have that MIGHT be CS cables came with an original promise 20267 raid card that I was going to use at one time for a raid here. Those two cables are blue for the card end and its keyed too, grey for the (s/b slave) next, and black for the end (s/b master) one. But I gave that up when the horror stories about the 20267 started surfaceing on lkml. I don't know if all its bugs have been coded around now or not.
Mike
p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} This message made from 100% recycled bits. You have found the bank of Larn. I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you. I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!
-- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Gene Heskett wrote:
whack
And someone else quoted the last two in reverse. Can someone PLEASE go get one of these friggin cables and settle the argument? Good color vision required of course :)
Gene: I went through some Maxtor data sheets, and they say that blue goes to the motherboard, gray to the slave and black to the master. I noted that Maxtor refers to the cable as a "UDMA interface cable". My understanding is that the 80 wire cables came into existence to handle the higher data speeds required by the UDMA interface, and don't have anything to do with cable select. Maxtor also states that the supplied cable is to be used with either type of jumpering. Although Maxtor does not explictly state that the gray/slave black/master must observed when using master/slave jumpering, one of my hardware references [1] does say so.
It's left as an exercise for the reader to dissect a cable and settle the crossover/straight-through/termination questions. My eyes are too old for that kind of crap -- especially at this hour.
-- cmg
[1] "PC Hardware in a Nutshell" by R.B. Thompson and B.F. Thompson; O'Reilly, 3d ed; 2003.
Carroll Grigsby wrote:
Gene: I went through some Maxtor data sheets, and they say that blue goes to the motherboard, gray to the slave and black to the master. I noted that Maxtor refers to the cable as a "UDMA interface cable". My understanding is that the 80 wire cables came into existence to handle the higher data speeds required by the UDMA interface, and don't have anything to do with cable select. Maxtor also states that the supplied cable is to be
That is correct. There are 40 wire cables which are CS capable.
used with either type of jumpering. Although Maxtor does not explictly
If the cable is made properly, then it is compatible with either CS or M/S jumpering on the drives (if they are made properly).
state that the gray/slave black/master must observed when using master/slave jumpering, one of my hardware references [1] does say so.
That is unclear to me. The other pins are the same. It might have something to do with termination, but for several years both floppies and hard drives have used "close enough" termination, with something in the middle on every drive.
It's left as an exercise for the reader to dissect a cable and settle the crossover/straight-through/termination questions. My eyes are too old for that kind of crap -- especially at this hour.
All one really needs to do is read the spec.
Mike
Mike McCarty wrote:
Carroll Grigsby wrote:
snip
It's left as an exercise for the reader to dissect a cable and settle the crossover/straight-through/termination questions. My eyes are too old for that kind of crap -- especially at this hour.
All one really needs to do is read the spec.
Mike: Having started in the pre-CP/M era, I've always been skeptical about how faithful manufacturers are in honoring specifications. (I've got a box full of old RS232 cables and adapters. No two of them are identical.) -- cmg
Carroll Grigsby wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
All one really needs to do is read the spec.
Mike: Having started in the pre-CP/M era, I've always been skeptical about how faithful manufacturers are in honoring specifications. (I've got a box full of old RS232 cables and adapters. No two of them are identical.) -- cmg
You can say that again. I can remember S-100 cards that would not work together. Things didn't improve much with ISA cards. I even have some PCI cards that will not work together. It usually happens because they can save on costs by cutting a few corners. You end up with a product that works most of the time. When you get two products that do not work together, it is always the other guys fault. I have been down that road too many times.
Then you run into things like Apple using DB-25 connectors for SCSI devices. Then some PC SCSI cards started doing the same thing. I have a SCSI card that has in the troubleshoot section something that say if the system will not boot after plugging in your printer, that you need to unplug the printer from the SCSI port, and plug it in the printer port...
In an ideal world, reading the specs would be enough. In the real world, you can not count on things following the specs!
Mikkel
Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
ISA cards. I even have some PCI cards that will not work together.
I bought one last year that was very picky about what it worked with.
It usually happens because they can save on costs by cutting a few corners.
In my case, it was a PCI Radeon 9250. I suspect that the card treated PCI as a slow AGP with a few bits missing, and was continually surprised when there were *other devices on the bus*...
James.
Carroll Grigsby wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
Carroll Grigsby wrote:
snip
It's left as an exercise for the reader to dissect a cable and settle the crossover/straight-through/termination questions. My eyes are too old for that kind of crap -- especially at this hour.
All one really needs to do is read the spec.
Mike: Having started in the pre-CP/M era, I've always been skeptical about how faithful manufacturers are in honoring specifications. (I've got a box full of old RS232 cables and adapters. No two of them are identical.) -- cmg
Well, Recommended Standard 232 was one of those which had much more in it than most people needed, so a lot of the pins got hijacked. It was the Standard people loved to violate. A disc drive interface is (1) less generally useful and (2) less amenable to hijacking for other purposes.
Mike
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Mike McCarty wrote:
Well, Recommended Standard 232 was one of those which had much more in it than most people needed, so a lot of the pins got hijacked. It was the Standard people loved to violate. A disc drive interface is (1) less generally useful and (2) less amenable to hijacking for other purposes.
Mike
Over reading many specs, I've found that they are to be used as guidelines more than definitive absolutes.
Some manufacturers take the definitions literally, and some take a more liberal approach to the specifications.
- -James
James Kosin wrote:
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Mike McCarty wrote:
Well, Recommended Standard 232 was one of those which had much more in it than most people needed, so a lot of the pins got hijacked. It was the Standard people loved to violate. A disc drive interface is (1) less generally useful and (2) less amenable to hijacking for other purposes.
Mike
Over reading many specs, I've found that they are to be used as guidelines more than definitive absolutes.
Some manufacturers take the definitions literally, and some take a more liberal approach to the specifications.
I have to agree with this. And I also agree that one cannot rely on specs too much. I dunno how many pieces of equipment I've written drivers for did *not* perform according to the docs.
I wouldn't buy a disc cable which had a yellow connector on it, though.
Mike
On Thursday 23 February 2006 23:18, Carroll Grigsby wrote:
Gene Heskett wrote:
whack
And someone else quoted the last two in reverse. Can someone PLEASE go get one of these friggin cables and settle the argument? Good color vision required of course :)
Gene: I went through some Maxtor data sheets, and they say that blue goes to the motherboard, gray to the slave and black to the master. I noted that Maxtor refers to the cable as a "UDMA interface cable". My understanding is that the 80 wire cables came into existence to handle the higher data speeds required by the UDMA interface, and don't have anything to do with cable select. Maxtor also states that the supplied cable is to be used with either type of jumpering. Although Maxtor does not explictly state that the gray/slave black/master must observed when using master/slave jumpering, one of my hardware references [1] does say so.
It's left as an exercise for the reader to dissect a cable and settle the crossover/straight-through/termination questions. My eyes are too old for that kind of crap -- especially at this hour.
-- cmg
Hey now, thats my line! At 71, I find I must use a strong lens to inspect circuit boards for cracks and cold solder joints these days.
I have the tools, after 55 years of chaseing electrons for a living, who doesn't, but trying to keep track of which hole in an 80 pin connector that I actually have the pin plugged into gets to be pretty darned tedious & mistake prone.
[1] "PC Hardware in a Nutshell" by R.B. Thompson and B.F. Thompson; O'Reilly, 3d ed; 2003.
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 21:35 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
And someone else quoted the last two in reverse. Can someone PLEASE go get one of these friggin cables and settle the argument? Good color vision required of course :)
Go by the distance between connectors, you can do that in the dark. The two closest to each other are master and slave, with slave in the middle. The one furthest away is the host. ;-)
On 2006.2.24, at 11:35 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
CS cables are supposed to use blue for the MB connector, black for "master" and grey for "slave", IIRC.
And someone else quoted the last two in reverse.
I'm sure it was just a crossed nerve in the output device.
Can someone PLEASE go get one of these friggin cables and settle the argument? Good color vision required of course :)
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 21:35 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
On Thursday 23 February 2006 16:18, Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
[snip]
If you use M/S jumpering on the drives, then in theory it doesn't matter where you connect them.
Except it appears to me that it matters as far as terminating the line properly is concerned. Ideally it would seem the termination should be at the far end where the master is connected to avoid the possibility of a mismatch at the end of the stub that would result if the slave is at the far end. How much ringing might occur and the severity of it's effect is an unknown? It would be interesting if I could get into the circuit and poke around with a scope probe ...
Agreed.
[snip]
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Not crossed. For CS, the drives have resistive pull-ups on them. The MB pulls down one line. The wire to this line is *severed* as the slave connector, so the "master" sees a high, while the "slave" sees a low on this pin. (The MB may have a pull-up and the drives a pull-down, I forget the polarity.)
If the h/d manufacturer provided this explanation this thread would never have started. I would have never asked any questions. It appears
Well, just how much of the interface should they document? Each pin? Just the Cable Select pin?
that I probably have cable select which I will try here in a little while. The drives can be jumpered for CS and I have 80 wire ribbon cables so it appears that should work if I understand everything I've read here? It would be helpful if the user knew that he was dealing with a c/s cable, there is no mark apparently other than the fact that there are more wires than connector pins to tie them to?
Color of the connectors. Usually non-CS cables use just one color of connector, presumably because they can get better volume prices that way. CS cables are supposed to use blue for the MB connector, black for "master" and grey for "slave", IIRC.
And someone else quoted the last two in reverse. Can someone PLEASE go get one of these friggin cables and settle the argument? Good color vision required of course :)
Definitively, and as was already quoted from the specs for these cables.
Black is the master connector (on the end) Grey is the slave connector (middle but nearer to the black) Blue is the motherboard connector (on the other end) (blue is the specified color but manufacturers do use different colors)
I have seen several with different colors at the board end, but always the black and grey are correct. The one I just got with my new Giga-Byte motherboard is green on the board end.
Mike McCarty:
If you use M/S jumpering on the drives, then in theory it doesn't matter where you connect them.
bobgoodwin:
Except it appears to me that it matters as far as terminating the line properly is concerned. Ideally it would seem the termination should be at the far end where the master is connected to avoid the possibility of a mismatch at the end of the stub that would result if the slave is at the far end.
Theoretically, you should terminate the cable at both ends with something. I would expect to see problems with a cable flapping about. I've seem old IDE systems wired up in all sorts of ways without problems. I've seen systems come in with problems, but you're never quite sure if just fiddling with the cable fixed things, rather than changing the position, unless you prove the cable is intermittent by repeatedly poking it about.
If it seems slightly dodgy I'll replace it, they're so cheap and it's not worth the headaches. Most cables aren't meant for repeated plugging and unplugging anyway, so if you've got a fiddler's broken box on your hands, there's a very good chance that they've worn out the contacts, or wrenched the ribbon out of the IDC connector teeth.
How much ringing might occur and the severity of it's effect is an unknown? It would be interesting if I could get into the circuit and poke around with a scope probe ...
You'd have to be careful that the measurement, itself, doesn't affect the readings; which is quite likely with such high speed data. You'd also need to know how much ringing was tolerable by the specs, anyway.
If the h/d manufacturer provided this explanation this thread would never have started. I would have never asked any questions. It appears that I probably have cable select which I will try here in a little while. The drives can be jumpered for CS and I have 80 wire ribbon cables so it appears that should work if I understand everything I've read here? It would be helpful if the user knew that he was dealing with a c/s cable, there is no mark apparently other than the fact that there are more wires than connector pins to tie them to?
Yes, it doesn't help when you get unlabelled jumpers on drives, new drives in a bag with no instructions, and manufacturers with useless websites.
I have yet to find a system that won't work with manual jumpering, and it's what I always use. If it works, there's no point in caring if the cable is cable-select. If it doesn't work, you've only got a few variations that you need to try. But I'd be most suspicious of: (a) crap cabling which ought to be replaced, and (b) a broken drive which is likely to cause you other grief, too.
Probably the worst aspect to jumpering drives is finding out that you need two jumpers in the block, for your situation, but the damn manufacturer only supplied one!
On Thursday 23 February 2006 15:10, bobgoodwin wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
bobgoodwin wrote:
Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave drives? I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector pins.
If you have more wires than pins, you almost surely have a CABLE SELECT cable. In fact, if your cable is less than five years old, you probably have CS. Which end goes where depends on how you jumper your hard drives.
I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave." I presently have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it
If you use M/S jumpering on the drives, then in theory it doesn't matter where you connect them.
Except it appears to me that it matters as far as terminating the line properly is concerned. Ideally it would seem the termination should be at the far end where the master is connected to avoid the possibility of a mismatch at the end of the stub that would result if the slave is at the far end. How much ringing might occur and the severity of it's effect is an unknown? It would be interesting if I could get into the circuit and poke around with a scope probe ...
;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't boot. I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the wrong connectors plugged into the drives.
I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?
Not crossed. For CS, the drives have resistive pull-ups on them. The MB pulls down one line. The wire to this line is *severed* as the slave connector, so the "master" sees a high, while the "slave" sees a low on this pin. (The MB may have a pull-up and the drives a pull-down, I forget the polarity.)
If the h/d manufacturer provided this explanation this thread would never have started. I would have never asked any questions. It appears that I probably have cable select which I will try here in a little while. The drives can be jumpered for CS and I have 80 wire ribbon cables so it appears that should work if I understand everything I've read here? It would be helpful if the user knew that he was dealing with a c/s cable, there is no mark apparently other than the fact that there are more wires than connector pins to tie them to?
No, I believe the marker is the fact that each connector is a different color is what identifies a CS cable. As has been quoted here numerous times now, blue is the motherboard (or controller) end, grey IIRC is the end connector that should be plugged into the device that you want to be the master device, with the other, either black, yellow or red (IIRC I've seen all three of those colors used on 80 wire cables recently without really knowing what they meant) about 5-6 inches back from one end of the cable which is intended to be plugged into the slave device.
And yes, all of the 6 or so drives I've picked up the last couple of days since this seemingly endless thread started, do require a jumper to be placed to put them into the CS mode. That isn't to say that they all do, but the ones I looked at, all required a jumper to put them in CS mode. The next 10 I pick up could make me wrong, but thats what I've observed in the last 2 days.
Floppies have a "twist" in their cables, not hard drives.
Can someone clear this up for me.
HTH
Mike
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