Slashdot Mirror
The Art of Cable Folding
Mudzy writes "Nothing is worst than a bunch of dangling cables inside your computer case. The Tech Zone has a cool article up showing how to do Voodoo PC style cable folds. "
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
well, on a more serious note, and as it is probably covered by the article, I set up quite some server boxes and countless PCs, and never had problems or issues with cables.
I however, had some problems to "loose" cables installed by previous techies.
I only experienced PCs with SCSI disks (or cables, for that matter) creating a somewhat noise airflow.
Or, worse, they stalled the air so the heat dissipation wasnt fully functional.
But I dont expect this to be a problem for "normal" PCs.
Powerful is he who overpowers his temptations.
Its not slashdotted, someone bright spark folded the network cable a little bit too much.
liqbase
Here are some tricks I use to fold and hide cable in my pc.
First, any ribbon cables usually go from motherboard to drive, and not a very long distance. This leaves a lot of slack ribbon. Fold up the slack and tuck it into a space in-between drives or in an emtpy 3.5" drive bay.
Circle around back. Most modern cases have a pull out try with the motherboard on it. Then there is a metal frame and then there is another piece of metal which is the right side panel of the case. There are many things that need to go from the top of the case to the bottom Such as power cables for your front intake fan and such. Route these wires in-between the metal frame and the right side panel. Nobody can see them back there unless it is an all acrylic case.
The emtpy 5.25" drive bays, if any, are a great place to put extra wiring. My PSU has many many more wires than I use, so far. So I take them all and just put them in the empty space under my dvd burner. The ribbon cable for the burner also travels into this space and then out of it again just a couple inches from the ide plug on the motherboard. Think of it as a bucket to put unused wires in where nobody can see them.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
back in the 90's when I was building PCs, we tried to be as neat as possible, folding cables to keep them flat, running them under mainboards to hide them, etc. When someone came up with a nice fold pattern, we'd call them the cablegami master for the day.
Same here, I was doing this back before people even considered putting windows in their cases. It just makes it easier to add and remove things from the case. I was always sick of how hp/compaq/dell were always just tossing cables in the computer and made them look crappy. (btw you should have seen my breadboard computer i made at wsu, was a work of art :))
Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
Slashdot just isn't aimed at us anymore
Amen, brother. This is one of the most pathetic articles yet. I can get more useful techie information reading the back of my cereal box.
Can we have a referendum on Slashdot editors today? After all, it's election day in America. Cast your votes, my Slashdot brethren. Click your mouse and be counted: In or out? Toss the poseurs, or give 'em another chance?
Because not everyone wants to pay £5 for a flat IDE cable, another £5 for a flat floppy cable, and another £5 for a another flat IDE cable for the CD/DVD drives. Perhaps if rounded cables were sensibly priced then flat-cable folding wouldn't be an issue.
Even worse, they apparently don't even know what kind of cables they are talking about. They claim ATA133 cables hold their shape better than ATA66 cables. Too bad ATA66 and ATA133 cables are the same thing. From the text, they appear to mean standard 40-pin IDE (which some might clal ATA33) cables rather than ATA66 as they state:
My lord it's been awhile since i did an ascii diagram... lets give it a shot shall we. not all cables are equal xoxoxoxoxoxoxox - 80 pin with an unused cable between each used cable to reduce crosstalk xxxxxxxxx - 40 pin.. no crosstalk reduction xxxx xxxxxx -- round cable with no crosstalk xxxxxx reduction xxxx oooo oxoxox - halfassed representation of xoxoxo spaced round cables oooo round cables use the same idea only on a grid as opposed ot a streight line. presume 'x' in the above diagrames are used cables and 'o' is not o x o x o o o o o o o x o x o o o o o o would be the most effective x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o is usually how it's done with round cables how many of your flat cables are grounded? my round cables all have grouning strips on each end. Granted i do prefer flat, i find clients request round more and more. flat cables can be just as vunerable to crosstalk as round cables and 80 pin flats are no better at avoiding it than a good set of rounds. So suck my left nut you wanker yanker.
So unless each of the 40 data cables are [i]individually raped in a foil or copper AND grounded AT BOTH ENDS[/i] your cables are not sheilded AND you've been ripped off.
Perhaps I'm lost as to the cause of cross talk, but wouldn't a straight through cable be more likely to induce cross talk than a round cable? Now, perhaps they make round cables differently than I would expect them to, but isn't this why we use round ethernet cables with circuit pairs twisted together rather than straight cables with circuit pairs all in a line?
I know straight, flat phone cabling carring 2 phone lines creates lots of cross talk, while equal lengths of CAT 5 carring 4 phone lines won't create any (at least, noticable to the (my) human ear).
I'd venture that so long as the circuit pairs in the round IDE cable are twisted together, cross talk should be less of an issue in the round IDEs.. But then, perhaps there aren't pairs in an IDE cable the way there are pairs in a CAT5 cable...
But the parent is right, the sheilded cables are completely worthless.
In the world of roadies and pro audio nerds, there's a method for cable folding/wrapping that I learned years ago. It's popularly called the "over/under method".
The idea is to wrap the cable in such a way that, when thrown, it will unravel perfectly without any knots or tangles; but it's still useful for smaller cables because it trains the shielding in such a way that promotes flexibility and prevents twists, curves, and tangles.
I'm a part-time audio nerd, but I manage a fairly good-sized PA system (24ch/4buss mixer, 800w mains, 250w monitors, for those who care)
The trick is, I was trained by a leftie. I'm right handed, but I learned to coil cables left-handed.
A musician friend once "helped" me by coiling all the mic cables. He's a climber, so he knows the over-under method, but when I tossed a cable it came out a completely twisted mess.
When I complained, he pointed out that he's also a volunteer firefighter, and there's a method he knows for coiling ropes such that, when thrown, they have a knot every 12 inches. "If you prefer, I can coil 'em up that way."
He's not allowed to help me anymore.
--