Cable Select Cable

Instructions:


To start with, you probably already have a computer that "needs" a cable select cable, or a few hard drives in it that may require this type of cable.

First, lets talk about what this whole "cable select" thing means. Cable select cables use the actual cable to determine which drive will be designated "master" and which drives will be designated the "slave" drive.

OK. Say you have two drives in a cable select configuration. Suppose your controller only supports cable select drives.
Here is how to take a regular garden variety IDE cable and convert it into a "cable select" cable: Set both drives jumpers to "CS". Usually on newer drives there are three sets of jumpers on the back of the drive between the power connector and data cable connector. The jumpers usually have a diagram on top of the drive with settings for MA, SL, and CS, standing for master, slave, and cable select. You'll want to put the little plastic "jumper" on the "CS" pair of prongs. Older drives can have different jumper setups as far as where the jumpers are located and how many sets of prongs there are, and often don't even include the jumper diagram on the drive. You'll need to get the settings off the manufacturer’s web site for these drives. After setting your jumpers, you're ready to go about making the cable.

Take your cable and find either a red or other coloured stripe on one side. The stripe can be solid or dotted line. The stripe indicates "pin #1". Each little bump in the cable will correspond with another pin number and its corresponding wire. You'll need a razor blade or exacto knife or some other very sharp cutting tool to do this, don't even try it with a pair of scissors or something like that, these cables are rather delicate, and can easily be damaged by trying to force a blunt cutting tool trough them. You'll need to do your work between the 1st and 2nd drive connectors.

They will usually be the ones closest together, although there's no reason that you can't use the connector meant for the controller to be the last drive cable, and the "supposed" last drive cable as the controllers cable, as long as you plug them in with the pin 1 stripe on the correct side of everything. This would come in handy for those with widely spaced hard drives, with one very close to the motherboards IDE controller connector or other controller connector. You need to decide which connector will be which, before doing the "surgery". Cut through the cable with the blade between the 27th and 28th humps and between the 28th and 29th humps, a short distance to make the 28th wire easy to separate from the rest of the cable. A little slice will do. Make sure not to cut into the round humps! Between them, ok? Now you can use scissors or wire cutters to cut out a half-inch or so of that 28th wire. Just make sure to cut enough so the metal wires inside won't be able to touch each other. Try to cut nicely, not sloppily and put a little electrical tape over the bare spots on the wire or over that section of cable. The drive after the cut will be the slave drive, the one before the cut (closer to the controller) will be the master drive.
Warnings, etc:
Some IDE controllers don't support cable select, neither do some earlier IDE drives. Make sure they all support the feature before trying to use it. Almost all modern IDE drives have this option. Supposedly, a cable select cable can be used with hard drives jumpered as master and slave.
Neither drives nor controllers would normally be damaged using a cable select cable in an inappropriate manner, although I wouldn't put it past someone to find a way to do so.

The Beginning

In the early 1980's a group of people got together to share their knowledge about computers which at the time was not a lot as it was the beginning of the PC age. The computers of the day were PC XT's with 5" floppy disc drives maybe a 10meg hard disc drive and a whopping 640kb of memory. At this time a 13" black and white monitor was the norm and the operating system was DOS 3.1. These were fun times, learning new thing every week.

The Meetings

The venue for the meetings of the computer group was Kingsley's place in Highett. These meeting continued for about 12 years, different people would turn up on a Thursday night to discuss the new hardware and software that was appearing on a regular basis. Some nights there could have been 15 plus people all trying to learn. When Kingsley moved we then moved the meetings to a factory that Bill had in Cheltenham. Bill closed the factory and we then moved the meetings to his new premises in Nepean Highway Highett.
The group had dropped down to 6 with occasional other people turning up. At this time the new technology was burning your own CD's, so we all put in and set up a purpose CD burning machine. This was not all that successful as we made quite a few coasters and this was at a time that a blank CD was $2 or more.

Bill sold up and moved to Darnum but also moved his business to Dandenong, so that's where we had our computer club meetings. Bill retired and we then had to find another meeting place, John offered his den and computer room as a meeting place and now we have our meeting every second week, these meetings don't last as long as they did as we are all getting a bit older and the technology has matured and there are less changes

Motor Homes

My motor home was a Sunliner