Hard drive cable question -

[bobgoodwin]

Does it matter which forty pin connector plugs into the master and slave 
drives? 

I have come to the realization after struggling with some problems that 
there are a lot more wires in the ribbon cable than there are connector 
pins.

I now see that Maxtor designates the connector at the end of the cable 
as the "master" and the one just below it as the "slave."  I presently 
have only one drive jumpered as master with FC4 running on it and it 
;doesn't seem to care which data cable connector is attached to it, but 
when I put in the second drive, jumpered as "slave" the computer won't 
boot.  I decided the drive was bad but now I'm wondering? It may be the 
wrong connectors plugged into the drives.

I thought "cable select" cables had wires obviously crossed in the 
ribbon cable but that may not be true with this 80 wire ribbon?

Can someone clear this up for me.

Thanks.

Bob Goodwin   Zuni, Virginia