Can someone tell me, why do the 80pin ATA cables in the Mac towers have one of the wires punched out? And are there any ramifications when replacing the cable with a complete cable which doesn't have the wire punched out? thanks
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that´s something asked myself, too...
I guess I should have said 40pin/80wire cable, or are they technically 80pin?
The hole creates a difference between the two connectors, allowing Cable Select settings to be used on both drives, rather than setting master and slave. Put a different way, the cable assigns the master and slave rather than the drive jumpers.
Or, they're speed holes that make your drives go faster.
That's interesting. I've never heard of or seen anyone using those cables for cable select. You can also use them for master/slave, but would it be better to use them in a cable select setup? The cable to the optical drives also has the hole, so the optical drives can go cable select too then. Hmm, my B&W manual has long since disappeared. It would be interesting to see if it's mentioned in there, but I don't remember anything like that. If you're correct, then it seems like Apple put them in there, but didn't tell any of the consumers about it.
So, does that mean you can take any 80wire ATA cable and punch out that one wire and turn the cable into a cable select cable?
For anyone wanting to catch the humor in your link, do a search (command-f) for "speed holes." Guess I'm wearing my happy face today. It's my birthday. I could use a new car. honk, honk