Unless I've misunderstood your post, you seem to be asking if anyone has
tried rolling up a regular, flat 80 wire IDE cable into a round
configuration, and whether this action will affect it's efficiency.

Personally, I didn't go down the the roll-your-own track - I took the lazy
way out and bought some commercially available round 80 wire IDE cables
about 6 months ago, prior to that I was using the regular flat version.

In case anyone's wondering, the reason for the round cables, is to improve
air flow within the computer case, while the reason for the 40 extra wires
in the new 80 wire cables is to reduce interference and 'cross-talk' between
the signal carrying wires.

PCGuide.com has this to say about 80 wire cables:
---------------------------------------->>>>--------------------------------
-------------
'The obvious question, of course, is this: what's the point of adding 40
extra wires to a cable if they aren't connected to anything? :^) Well for
starters, the 40 wires are connected to something, just not their own pins
on the interface connectors. The extra 40 wires don't carry new information,
they are just used to separate the "real" 40 signal wires, to reduce
interference and other signaling problems associated with higher-speed
transfers. So the 40 extra conductors are connected to ground, interspersed
between the original 40 conductors of the old cable. Any stray signals that
would "cross-talk" between adjacent wires on the 40-conductor cable are
"absorbed" by these extra ground wires, improving signal integrity. The
extra ground wires can be either all of the even-numbered wires, or all of
the odd-numbered wires in the cable"
---------------------------------------->>>>--------------------------------
------------
(Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCable80-c.html

Getting back to your question as to whether or rolling up a flat 80 wire
cable into a round configuration will affect it's efficiency, my
understanding is that it should not, provided, of course, that the rolling
is done carefully and without damage to the ribbon or terminals.

However, someone else may be able to comment with harder information.

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
[log in to unmask]


----- Original Message -----
From: "R.Torres" Subject: [PCBUILD] round IDE cables


> Hello Everyone,
>
> I have a question about round IDE cables.  ATA 100/133 have an extra 40
> wires in the cables to reduce noise. Does rolling up these cables defeat
the
> purpose of the noise reducing extra wires ??? Has someone actually tested
> these round cables??
>
> TIA
>
> Rick Torres

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