[PLUG] Evil IDE problems fixed

[Galen Seitz]

Alan <alan at clueserver.org> wrote:

> I have been having odd ide problems on my dual Athlon uber-machine since
> I bought it.
> 
> I finally figured out what the problem was.
> 
> The drive cables were 1" too long.
> 
> I bought ata-133 cables that were within spec. I forgot to add in the 1"
> of cable in the drive tray for the primary drive.
> 
> I removed the drive tray, added shorter cables and everything works MUCH
> better now.
> 
> The thing that was confusing is that the error messages looked more like
> a DMA problem than a cable problem.

The problem was more likely due to the impedance discontinuity introduced
by the connectors associated with the drive tray.  IOW, if your connection
was just a plain cable of the equivalent length, I bet it would have
worked.  Of course, its a miracle that the IDE interface works at all
at 133 MHz.

galen