[G4] ATA BUS QUESTION

[Ronald Steinke]

On 28 Apr, 2007, at 4:50 PM, Harry Freeman wrote:

> So my bottom line is, yes it might make a difference which order  
> the drives are installed, but you can usually overcome any problems  
> that might arise.

Perhaps you are correct in this statement, but - you never did tell  
us how you had the drives identified and connected to the IDE ribbon.

Were they on the same ribbon? Were they identified as Master and  
Slave? Was one of them set to Cable Select? Was your IDE ribbon a 40  
wire instead of a 80 wire type? Does your IDE ribbon have one blue  
connector, one gray, and one black?

These factors can definitely have an effect on the startup procedure  
if one of the drive configurations is not compatible with the rest of  
your system.

Working with a computer recycling organization that primarily  
processes PCs, I get to see many problems from across the room. Some  
of the solutions I have seen actually depend on the direction that  
the ribbon is installed, ie: blue connector in MoBo, not in hard drive.

No, I do not work on the PCs, only on Macs, but some of my experience  
and knowledge is based on what happens across the room. Yes, we  
usually do find a way to make the darned PCs work properly. If  
everything that is tried fails to correct a problem, we can always  
scrap the thing out and reuse some of the parts at least.