Frickin' belkin IDE cables.

[siggy-lxvi.livejournal.com]

Finally got the last parts for my new gaming PC this past week. The two parts I was able to get locally for a price that didn't actually make me cringe in pain were the heatsink (a nice, heavy aluminum heatsink), and the IDE cables. One of them was a belkin. I get home today and finally have time to install XP. I get the last of the cables hooked up and start her up. No IDE devices found.

Wha? o.O

I'm going nuts switching the cables around, reseating power cables, all that good stuff, but no dice. I flip through the BIOS to try to find what's going on... No IDE devices detected. Finally I pull the IDE cables off, and notice that the Belkin doesn't have the usual tab on it to ensure that it goes in with the correct orientation. Some genius at belkin decided that conforming to the IDE standard wasn't important enough to warrant the little tab that keeps you from doing anything stupid, like, say, putting the cable in upside down. Dammit.

Stupid standard-breakers.

Comments

[kostika.livejournal.com]

Actually Belkin aren't the only ones. I've come across many a cable without the tab. Rule of thumb, red line goes closest to the power. Then you'll always have it in the right way.

I never check for the tab, always the red line.

[wyrdrune.livejournal.com]

Red line = pin 1 - sometimes the motherboard end isn't tabbed, and one has to look for the "pin 1" or "|>" marker on the motherboard connector.

[kostika.livejournal.com]

Yep that too.

[abstrak-tokatl.livejournal.com]

it probly does have something... but you didn't notice it.

[c0c0c0.livejournal.com]

A lot of the older cables don't have the tab either. I always look for the stripe, or the striped stripe. I don't need idiot tabs... ;)

[kuang.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that there actually wasn't a standard for IDE cable keying? I'm prepared to be wrong though - it's the first morning back at work and I'm currently decaffeinated..

[ghostdandp.livejournal.com]

I believe you are right. Not standard. Nice to have. But not part of the standard for it.

[twitchfetish.livejournal.com]

IDE standard has nothing to do with the keying. you can STILL buy brand new cables without it. it's not stupidity on their part, it's lack of attention on yours that caused your problem. first thing...VERY first thing you do when no drive detected is check cable orientation and kinks...

you got burned with PEBKAC. wear it :P

IV

[d0rx0r.livejournal.com]

You beat me to the PEBKAC post.

[taleya.livejournal.com]

I'm a little boggled by how many people are saying "red cable to power"

um, it's called pin 1..

Bah, I remember the days when standards were just about optional. Pin 1 wasn't necessarily on the same side as the molex, it was all a matter of experimentation...

[twitchfetish.livejournal.com]

or RTFM :)

IV

[twitchfetish.livejournal.com]

actually it's interesting to think that you can tell how long someone's been a tech - you're more likely to find someone who's been around for 10 years or more reading manuals and checking jumpers etc even when the standard is in place...just in case :)

IV

[taleya.livejournal.com]

And you find them obsessively arranging multiple floppies on a ribbon cable *just* so, and automatically going into the BIOS to set up a new HDD...

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Manuals? Bah! take away all the fun!

besides, most of these boxes were so dogshit that by the time they landed in anyone's hands they'd lost any hope of documentation...

[torkell]

I see you the unkeyed IDE cable and raise you a 3.5" floppy drive, with a keyed socket, underneath which was a cut-out in the plastic insulation layer and a matching cut-out in the PCB.

Yep, they had put the connector in upside-down. A few minutes work with some pliers and I now have a floppy drive with the connector keyed both ways.

[axessdenyd.livejournal.com]

They never used to have the little tabs on them.

I consider it a luxury when they do.

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Hell, they barely used to have pin 1 marked on the cable ribbon...

[axessdenyd.livejournal.com]

I don't remember seeing one without the red stripe, but I guess it's possible.

Then it's just time to break out the sharpie and make your own mark.

[taleya.livejournal.com]

old old old days...I've still got some of the cables floating around for an ol' 286 system. Sometimes they marked pin1, sometimes they didn't. You sure as hell didn't get notches though. And the arrangement of drives on a FDD ribbon cable counted as well in regards to the drive letter sequence.

Mind you, this was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and it was the habit of the time to wear a turnip on one's belt...

[axessdenyd.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I messed with things then...I just didn't see any cables without the stripe.

I like when I hook up old drives and the cable has a tab but the drive doesn't have a notch.

[taleya.livejournal.com]

and that's why needle-nosed pliers are an essential part of any tech toolbox :P

[axessdenyd.livejournal.com]

Dikes are better.

[jecook]

lol on the "turnip on one's belt" comment.

I award you 1 gold token.

[neferde.livejournal.com]

Wait... I just (re)built a computer for my mother where the IDEs didn't have tabs OR pin1 marked. Now you've got me wondering exactly how old those cables were since that computer was an amalgam of older computer bits already!

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Sure as shit wouldn't be 66 cables then!

Pardon, but this has to be done...

[toxico.livejournal.com]

RED STRIPE!
IT'S ON CABLES! CABLES FOR EVERYONE!!

[toxico.livejournal.com]

The reasoning for the lack of tab is obvious. If you leave that off of 1 million cables, you save your company US$2.25 in materials.

I mean, that's at least 3 cans of Mountain Dew. That's enough to keep someone coherent enough to function for an 8-hour workday if spaced properly.

If that person didn't have his/her Mountain Dew, imagine the consequences:

This person is responsible for stocking the line with the proper connectors. In a non-caffienated haze, a large supply of SCSI connectors are placed in-line for assembly, in place of the IDE connectors.

The resulting cables, which have 10 pins with no connecting cable on either side, are shipped to Fry's Electronics.

Fry's, having an unofficial reputation for misrepresenting merchandise, decides now is not the time to change business practice and labels the cables "SCSI Express." They are advertised in the next Sunday's newspaper.

White-bearded Linux users and militant Mac users snatch up the cables, as these are primarily the people clinging for dear life to the 50-pin SCSI interface, forecasting the hearalding of a new era that will once again give them carte blanche to needlessly berate Windows users with perceived superiority. Several fights break out at Starbucks coffee houses worldwide. Reports of disk wrote speed increases of 75% on machines running Fedora Core 2 float around various forums. One Windows ME user claims he is able to get the interface to transfer half of a Christina Aguilera MP3 before Digital Rights Management kicks in and thwarts his attempts at getting a performance reading.

Emphasis on the race for superiority continues. Mac users begin prophecising the coming of the 'Aryan Computer.' Cables are sold on eBay at 23x their otriginal price. Motherboard and peripheral manufacturers scramble to make a buck, adapting to the 'new standard' as quickly as they can.

While hardware manufacturers rush to keep up, Apple announces that an incompatibility with SCSI-E and various Adobe products will spontaneously reboot your computer. They recommend purchasing AppleCare and a new video iPod as the fix. Microsoft announces 14 new vulnerabilities as a result of SCSI-E testing and blames the bulk on McAfee, advising users to contact McAfee for a non-existant hotfix. The masses believe them, because "hey, they're Microsoft."

The suicide rate of tech support personnel rises sharply, while the demand for the cables skyrockets. Proponents of different operating systems riot in the streets and travel in gangs, donning various colors (Mac users in white, Windows users in primary colors, and Linux users in what is affectionately knows as 'Cheeto'). Computer crime rates reach an all-time high.

Stock markets crash. Entire economies crumble. Sales of the movie Hackers take off, with users scambling for 'that 3D city file manager interface.'

All this because you want your plastic tab. Is our world worth it to you? Not to me, my friend. Not to me. It's a justifiable omission.

DEATH TO THE TAB.

[jecook]

I like stripes, even if they can be hard to see on occasion. I could care less about tabs, though. and Death to the bastards who make the fuckers key'd.

::rummages around in large drawer marked "CABLES"::

Out of the three IDE cables I just pulled out of the drawer:

none are the 80 pin. THose are in the "test" machines, IIRC.

2 don't have tabs.

the one that has a tab also have a well defined strip indicating pin 1.

of the two that don't have tabes, one has a well defined stripe, and the other one has a dotted stripe.

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

Tab sucks.
Bawls rocks.

Death to your silly Tab.

[chainsaw-hime.livejournal.com]

Oh hells yes.

I'm trying to find a local place to buy Bawls that doesn't charge an arm and a leg ever since the CompUSA (yeah, I know, but... BAWLS!!!) closed down.

[siggy-lxvi.livejournal.com]

After reading the comments, I went back into the case to take a look at this mythical stripe of which you speak... Nope, not seeing it. The damn thing has neither tab nor pin-1 indicating stripe. I'll admit to a pebkac for trying to assemble a computer after 1 am, though.