-- Machine
Rounded IDE/Floppy Cables
-- 7.18.2001
-- By: GideonX
-- Page: 1 2
After putting together my box together again after
doing a needed cleaning
on it, I noticed that I needed to get those data cables fixed
up a bit. IDE cables are still flat in nature and are quite
the air blocker! Seems after our initial guide on creating rounded
cables, a cable manufacturer called UMaxPC
finally went and created some machine rounded varieties. The
cables themselves have a different label pointing to CalhounCentral.com,
but that seems to be their hosting company. Their price for
these cables hover around the $12 range.
With these machine rounded cables, what we will try
to accomplish will be see whether or not they compare with the
traditional un-rounded cables and hand rounded cables. Tests
will show if there are any kind of temperature drops within the case
and if data loss is seen with the hand rounded variety. Some
folks have mentioned that hand rounded cables cause data corruption
and so forth, we'll see if that is true. To follow through our
tests, we had SideWinder
Computers send over a few of their rounded cable samples and we
had HighSpeed
PC send over theirs. The cables are identical, but we
wanted to have a few cables around. This can rule out any type
of error of having just one set of cables. Wouldn't want any
kind of bias going on here : )
The above cables are what we used as
our control samples. The first picture is the already
rounded cables (Floppy, IDE ata/66 and SCSI 50-Pin). The second
picture is the cables following the traditional flat form.
Please note, the SCSI cable was tested when it was not rounded, its
not shown in the picture since I rounded it before I remembered to
take a picture of it. Apologies for that, but it was tested
before being rounded so all tests should be fine.
The cables above are the machine
rounded variety. Each each cable is stranded within its
casing, which is comprised of a heavy plastic. It is really
heavy and does a good job in protecting the inside wires. What
I did notice was, these cables felt greasy. Maybe it is the
finishing on the plastic, but I had to wash my hands afterwards.
Just something I noticed from touching it.
The SCSI has two connectors just like
the IDE version, but the floppy has lost the extra connectors.
Probably not an issue since I haven't seen anyone with two floppy
drives for a while now. The SCSI and IDE are both 18" while the
floppy is 24" in length.
Here we have the 50-pin SCSI, floppy
and IDE cable. I pushed the plastic covering down to show you
what the cables inside looked like. Each cable has a notch on
Pin 1, it may be a little hard to see but you shouldn't have any
problems inserting it in correctly.
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