IDE disk problem

Kostas Sfakiotakis kostassf at cha.forthnet.gr
Thu Apr 14 22:46:53 UTC 2005


Joel wrote:

<snip>

>>Over here i have two machines . One is a Pentium 166 MMX machine and
>>the other one is an AMD Athlon XP 2700+ . Both were build by combining
>>parts not as a computer of this or the other brand .
>>   All i know is this . The 166 MMX CPU  machine is using non UDMA
>>cabling and most probably non Cable Select cables .
> 
> 
> That site described some clues you could use to figure out the old
> cables.

The story of the missing pin maybe ? . If you look the hard disk
connector you will notice that one pin is missing .

> 
> One odd thing that it pointed out was that the pre-UltraDMA CS cables
> put the master in the middle of the cable, so you pretty much had to
> hang two drives on it in order to properly terminate the cable.

Yeap i always considered the top to be the master .


> If that works without generating random data errors under load, 

Being a home user i don't generally put much load to the hard disks ,
so maybe i don't cross the limit that would bring the errors on surface.

I would   guess the cable is not CS. Of course, I could be guessing wrong.

Don't worry about that . I can't seperate the Cable Select Cable from
the Non-Cable Select Cable myself . So i might be wrong myself .

 I don't  have much hands-on with ATA/IDE hardware. One problem with the
"if it
> works" approach, you may not be running something that will make the
> errors obvious, so you may some time down the road find valuable data
> gone awol. 

Acknowledged and agreed. The odd thing is that when this happens i might
not understand that the problem was caused by the jumper settings .

> 
> Those pages gave enough information that, if you know how to use a
> multimeter, you should be able to test it for CS wiring.

O.K. Well am not an expert but i can measure a resistance quite well .


>>   In the Athlon XP 2700+  i configured the drives as Master and Slave ( 
>>this one
>>has UDMA Cables , am unable to identify them as Cable Select ones or not 
>>) because
>>that was the working recipe i knew .
> 
> 
> Blue connector on one end, gray in the middle, black on the other.

I see many black connectors from here . I will recheck when the computer
is closed .


> If you do, be sure to put the master on the end (black), and not in the
> middle (gray).

Well i will have to recheck how things are , when the computer is closed .

 The standard says it should allow master in the middle if
> you strap the master and slave selects, but I'm betting manufacturers
> are not testing their designs (maybe even not sample-testing their
> products) for anything but master on the end.

I wouldn't love to take the risk either.


> GMT+9 and a lousy MSWindowbox.

Greece and a FC1/Windows XP box ( am dualbooting , XP is for watching TV
linux for the other things ) .

I'm lazy and posting with a MUA called Becky

for the very least it has a nice name .

 that works very nicely in the Japanese environment. It's MSWxxx
> only, but at least it doesn't try to run attachments for you.
> 
> 
>>for the  very usefull information on Pin 28 .
>>I wasn't aware of such information . I bookmarked also the pcguide.com
>>site .
> 
> 
> Seems to be a good site for this kind of information. I was glad to find
> it, too.


Greetings to the Country of the Rising Sun . May it never stops
rising ( if it could understand how bad we behave it would certainly do
so but .. )




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