Cable Select vs. Master/slave settings

[Jeff Vian]

On Sun, 2005-08-07 at 15:19 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 07 August 2005 13:29, Claude Jones wrote:
> >On Sun August 7 2005 1:06 pm, Jim Cornette wrote:
> >> Just reporting something that came up in postings earlier
> >> regarding cable select settings vs. setting the jumpers on the
> >> devices, I tried cable select on my drives because I wanted to
> >> swap the primary CDROM with the Secondary DVD burner. The jumpers
> >> set to master / slave worked fine when the CDROM which is on the
> >> secondary of the cable select cable. The CDROM was set to master,
> >> While the DVD was on the master of the cable select cable.
> >> When I changed the DVD to master and set the CDROM to slave. both
> >> set to the same position on the cable select cable, the devices dd
> >> not become recognized correctly. (CDROM on secondary, DVD on
> >> primary) Changing the devices to both cable select allowed the DVD
> >> to be master and the CDROM burner to be slave as desired.
> >>
> >> This is sort of a retraction and a note that jumper selection
> >> settings on a cable select IDE cable can cause trouble, primarily
> >> with the secondary connector on the cable selectable IDE cable.
> >
> >I see all sorts of declarative statements on this subject, here, and
> > they are generally wrong. One thing I do in my job is hardware
> > maintenance for a large collection of PC's of varying vintage, and
> > with many different configurations. I've messed with bad
> > jumper/cable select settings for years. The thing that can really
> > bite you, because it's easy to forget/overlook is the following
> > scenario: it is possible to get a system to work with a cable
> > select cable, and the devices jumpered master/slave, or one
> > jumpered master or slave and the other jumpered cable select - it's
> > unpredictable, but when it works, it just seems to, well..., work.
> > Scroll forward six months or a year, and you or someone else has to
> > replace one of the devices; it's easy to waste a lot of time
> > because you don't know, or have forgotten, that the system is
> > configured improperly, and with the new device, things don't just,
> > well...., work. If you have a cable select cable, jumper your
> > devices "cs" - if you have a standard non-cs cable, jumper your
> > devices master/slave. Follow this convention, and you won't have
> > problems - I'd be willing to bet that everyone who's declared that
> > you should ignore these protocols, and always jumper master/slave,
> > or some other variation on this argument, have simply been lucky -
> > they are victims  who just haven't been bit, ............., yet!
> >
> >--
> >Claude Jones
> >Bluemont, VA, USA
> 
> Nice idea Claude, but can you tell us how to tell the difference 
> between the cables so that we can properly identify them?
> 
The cable select cable is usually marked as such and many have tags
showing which is master and which is slave.
Almost every one made today has 3 different color connectors.   A
colored one at the board end (blue or red is common), gray in the middle
(slave) and black at the other end (master)

A good rule of thumb I use is that if all connectors are the same color
it is not CS.  If there are different colored connectors it is CS.

All  motherboards I have bought in the last 4 years have had CS cables
included, and all that I have found at the electronics stores (Comp USA,
Fry's, Best Buy, Circuit City, and others) are also CS.

You will also find that all new hard drives you purchase new will be set
as CS by default.

> -- 
> Cheers, Gene
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> 99.35% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
> Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
> message by Gene Heskett are:
> Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
>