Hard drive cable question -

[Tim]

Tim:
>> I've never heard of IDE using termination (despite understanding why

Mike McCarty:
> I suppose you mean ATA. Even the old MFM drives used termination,
> as do floppies.

>> transmission lines need proper termination).  There are no termination
>> options on IDE drives, they seem to rely on tolerance (cable length

> Yes, there are.

Show me one where you select/enable/disable termination in some way or
another.  I've never seen an IDE drive with any *options* for
controlling termination.  Keyword being *options* (as in something that
you control).  

I won't argue that they don't need termination, but I'll say that it's
not an option, the drives and hosts are designed with what they need
as-is.  Which goes some way to explaining why you can't use long cables,
you can't terminate drives optimally for how you've cabled them (one or
two drives), what they have has to work whether there's an extra drive
in the middle of the cable or not.

Ages ago I waded through the specs IDE/ATA, whatever you want to call
it, and don't recall user-configurable termination being discussed,
either.

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