ide cables

[Eggle]

I have a DVR set up with two ide HDDs connected with a ribbon cable with 40 holes in each plug, and each plug looks the same. There is a pink line running down one side of the grey.
I have just bought 2 more and the cable supplied has one of the 40 holes blocked off on each plug. It says it is an ide cable and it connects to the two HDDs but not to the motherboard, which has 40 pins.
What should I be looking for on the net?

[Cerberus90]

If you can take a picture of it, that would be very helpfull.

But it sounds like its an IDE cable.

IDE should have one pin blocked off, this ensures that you plug it in the right way round.


What motherboard do you have??

[dtmpower]

google - IDE pinouts

[buggalugs]

Have run into this a few times, if you can't get hold of another cable then in the past I've just made a hole for the pin to slide into with a hot pin in the past (literally a pin, like for sewing).

That pin doesn't do anything except stop you plugging things in the wrong way but once in a blue moon you find a cheap-ass mobo or cable combo like this.

The red stripe is the pin 1 end, it goes closest to the power plug on the drive and near the dot or tiny '1' on the motherboard.

HTH
Neil