40-pin, 80-conductor

[sean74]

I'm new to the ATA100 thing, and was wondering if I could put a DVD player (Creative Labs "Encore") on the same cable as my new 45GB IBM Deskstar (ata100 7200rpm) I got it OEM so I didn't get any directions or warnings about doing something like this

The fact that the deskstar has 40 pins but uses 80 wires just confuses me altogether, and I understand that the ATA100 controller is backwards compatible to ATA33, which uses 40 wire cables.

Now would I have to do this with a 40-wire ribbon, or would I be able to get away with an 80-wire ribbon and still have my HD work at ATA100 speeds?

Thanks for any feedback
-Sean

 

[Guest]

The only difference between the 40/80 cable, are extra wires in between the standard wires. These extra wires cut down on electrical interferance, and allow ATA66/100 drives to achieve the faster performance. The cables should work fine on any other device that uses a standard 40-wire cable.

 

[Guest]

Some CD-ROMs won't access properly on ATA66/100 cables, but your Creative DVD should do just fine. I built a P3 yesterday with a Creative Dxr3 8x DVD kit and a 45GB IBM 75GXP drive. The HD was the master and the DVD set as slave on the same ATA100 cable, and it worked fine.

~Weav