14 Aug
2008
14 Aug
'08
9:24 a.m.
On 14 Aug 2008 at 10:55, M H Stein wrote:
Well, I never knew that just replacing the cable in my
386 and 486 systems
would speed things up; live and learn. I always thought that if the mobo
wasn't pin 34 aware and UDMA capable then the cable wouldn't have much
effect on the transfer mode. AFAIK in order to use UDMA all three items
have to be UDMA capable, the mobo, the cable and the drives, although
I'd say that, assuming it's UDMA aware, the mobo controls the speed
depending on what kind of cable and drives it sees. Semantics?
Partly, I suppose. I can speak only from (a pile of) experience.
Using a UDMA cable can create some real problems with older systems.
And some early supposedly-UDMA-capable systems can't handle the full
transfer rate of UDMA-133.
IDE's pretty much been a mess from Day One. For example, I've got an
early IDE drive that flips the endian-sense on the word pair returned
for the total number of sectors on the drive. It was not uncommon
for drives from two different manufacturers not to work as master-
slave on the same cable.
At any rate, for the OP my advice stands. Use a 40-conductor cable
and forget about cable select--jumper for master and slave. And
cross your fingers and offer up a chicken or two to whatever deity is
in charge of IDE operation.
Cheers,
Chuck