Rounding Out Your IDE Cables

BrookHarty sent us a story that proves that sometimes it's the little things that are clever. Are you as annoyed as I am that those pesky IDE cables are big flat things that are hard to move around? Well, here's a HOWTO that explains, well, how to round them out! It won't solve global warming or change the world. But dang it, that's cool.

Comments

The Dumbshit way of doing things...

[human bean]

The reason that ribbon cables are flat is to preserve the phase relationships of multiple signals in a cable while at the same time reducing in-cable interference to a reasonable level. As speeds for data transfer become higher and higher, this becomes more and more important. Fortunately, most data transfers are now intelligent enough that error correction takes care of most of the glitches that used to stop systems in their tracks.

Rounding cables like this is a time-wasting method of destroying all that paid-for engineering. Try one of these instead:

1. Look in the Newark (or similar) catalog and buy one, for pity sake.

2. Take the long section (what you are most concerned with), carefully fold it up lengthwise, and slide it into a length of half-inch split loom tube (any good parts store for about fifteen cents).

Either of these will get you where you wanted to be, which was moving that cable out of the way. Also note that IDE and especially ATA cables must be cut to a certain length to avoid possible SWR problems. You might also look up the proper folding and routing of ribbon cables, which seems to be a lost art among PC manufacturers these days.