re ide cable vacsc qe vax csun edu wrote i just bought a new ide hard drive for my system to go with the one i already had my problem is this my system only had a ide cable for one drive so i had to buy cable with two drive connectors on it and consequently have to switch cables the problem is the new hard drive s manual refers to matching pin on the cable with both pin on the drive itself and pin on the ide card but for the life of me i cannot figure out how to tell which way to plug in the cable to align these most ide drives that i have dealt with have had pin labeled on the printed circuit board this is sufficient to determine which side is which if your ide drive does not have a label then you can look for a polarization notch in the receptacle the connector on the drive with the pins if the receptacle is center polarized that is it has one rectangular notch about mm wide positioned in the center of one side then you can identify pin as follows look into the pins with the notch at the top pin is at the top right on all drives i have seen this is toward the power connector as for which pin is pin on the controller well you can use the same criteria but look hard for the labelling of any pin once you know which end pin are on or pins the oposite end then you are all set all you need to do is keep the pin end connected to the pin end you don t even have to look at the cable itself just trace the pin side of the cable through usually the pin of the cable is identified by a different color red usually but beware many cable makers are not very careful about this i have seen cables with pin being the one marked red of course with non polarized connectors this doesn t matter you can plug the cable in either way and you decide which side is pin secondly the cable has like a connector at two ends and one between them i figure one end goes in the controler and then the other two go into the drives does it matter which i plug into the master drive and which into the slave any help appreciated thanks it doesn t matter what gets plugged where but it does matter how the drives are jumpered there will be amongst other options two jumpers that you should be concerned with on both drives one jumper will select whether the drive is the slave or the master if it is the master then a second jumper selects whether or not a slave is present you will have to consult the docuementation that came with you drives if you do not have docuementation then just call the manufacturers hotline number or fax number if they have one this kind of information is routinely needed by people just like yourself they will fax you complete info about the jumpers if you don t have convenient access to a fax machine then you can usually get voice help or post the specific question to this group i probably won t be able to help you good luck gordon lang
