Re: Amazing what a little RTFM can do :>

BearHeart / Bill Weinman (bearheart@bearnet.com)
Fri, 19 Apr 1996 23:48:59 -0500


At 03:57 pm 4/19/96 +0200, Kurt Wachmann spake:
>The master should be at the end of the cable, because the master does
>electrical termination. The slave should be between the controller and
>the master.

You seem to be confusing AT/IDE with SCSI. There is optional
"termination" in IDE, because the controler is resident on the drives.
It does not matter which drive is where on the cable. (unless there's
a twist in the cable--see below.)

>If you have only one drive attached, it should be configured as master,
>otherwise the cable is not terminated. (and it can sit anywhere on the
>cable).

Actually, the reason that "one drive" must be master, is because
the "master" is the one that runs the controller logic. There has
to be "one" controller.

>> Uhh? You mean the drives settings (master/slave) is ALSO dependant on
>> its RIBBON location??? I thought floppy drives were the only ones that
>> actually did that (and for them because of the little twist in the
>> cable that you can see). But you say that IDE is the same way?? Huh! I
>> connected, disconnected, and moved more IDE devices than I can think
>> of and have NEVER been aware of the cable-location thingy.

>No the cable position does not have anything to do with selection of
>devices.

In some drives, if the "cable select" option is enabled, you can
configure the drive number with a twist in the cable, like on PC floppies.
This is only available on some IDE drives.

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