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Do you use the round or flat cables?

Poll ended at Thu Apr 17, 2003 11:53 pm

Flat, standard, tape.
19 (49%)
Round cables.
18 (46%)
Other. Please explain.
1 (3%)
Paper clips and bubble gum wrappers.
1 (3%)
 
Total votes: 39
 
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Darth Gerbil
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Do most of you use the round cables?

Sat Apr 12, 2003 11:53 pm

I'm thinking about grabbing some round cables and wondered what most of you are using.
 
Captain Ned
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 1:07 am

I'm a flat cable guy. I'll take IDE signal integrity over illusory temperature reductions any day.
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Starfalcon
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 1:15 am

I use both, mostly round for my cases with windows and flat in my cases I do not care about. I really do not think that it makes much of a difference what kind you use, I have had rounded cables since they first came out and have had zero problems with them. Just use whatever you want to and do not worry about it.
 
smakkythecamel
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 1:36 am

I made my own rounded ones out of the flat ones, and my case is pretty crowded so it does make a difference with the airflow. I just got a razorblade and slit down the ribbon, being careful not to expose the wires. Seems to have worked okay. I didn't cover them with anything, so they look kinda ugly, but serve a good purpose.
 
eckslax
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 1:59 am

I use rounded cables and don't have any problems with it. It definately looks better and doesn't get in the way as much. The only gripe I have is that the rounded cables are not as flexable as the flat cables.
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yarbo
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 2:25 am

I've got a rounded IDE cable in one system, and a rounded SCSI cable (very sexy) in another. The rest use flat cables. I had another rounded IDE cable but it stopped working (it didn't have the pull tabs, so that's probably what broke)
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Alex
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 8:56 am

I use flat for my hard drives, just because I cant bend and squeeze my round in there. I use round for my CDRW drive.

I use both.
 
slymaster
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 9:58 am

I am using rounded cables for my CD/DVD drives, and flat for HD's. I am not worried about signal integrity on these drives, as they work at much lower speed than the high-end ATA drives. Whether the improved air-flow helps temperatures or not, the rounded cables make an amazing difference in reducing the crowding inside your case - if you have a lot of HD's, it becomes a lot easier to hook everything up by using a few rounded cables.

The Unix servers and workstations I have worked on in the past have shipped from the factory using rounded SCSI cables for many years before I first saw a rounded IDE cable.

I would say go for the round - if you ever have an HD problems, you can always go back to the ribbon cable, but I don't think you will have any issues.

Eventually, we will all have Serial ATA, and this will become another one of those hardships we had to put up with 'in the old days'.
 
David
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 10:49 am

I use both.

I want some SATA HDD's, but they're just too expensive to bother with right now.
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mattsteg
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 11:35 am

both (3 rounded, 1 flat in my main rig, all the rest have just flat ones)
Image
I went to some rounded cables because it was getting harder and harder to route so many flat ones.
...
 
absurdity
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 3:42 pm

I got into using rounded purely for the fact that they're easier to work with inside the case (at least the ones I got). I'm constantly pulling stuff out and installing new stuff, so anything to make that easier helps. The clutter that flat cables create for me just bugs me.
 
Freon
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 4:13 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
I'll take IDE signal integrity over illusory temperature reductions any day.


Interesting. A battle of yet baseless assertions. Choose your lie--but maybe I'm completely out of touch.

<troll>
I'll choose reductions in temperature over illusionary gains in signal integrity any day.
</troll>

These forums are so interesting. The things people choose to believe... Or want to believe.

FWIW, I actually did have trouble once with DMA being enabled on a round cable I made with one particular hard drive (IBM 20GB 34GXP).

Also, I really have no choice but to use round cables in my SFF case. I simply couldn't fit flat cables without *really* blocking airflow (say, blocking 1/3 of the single main case fan).
 
Buub
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Sun Apr 13, 2003 10:03 pm

I'll choose reductions in temperature over illusionary gains in signal integrity any day.


While the temperature reductions are anecdotal and dependent on individual machines, the violation of the IDE spec in signal integrity with rounded cables is well documented.

Most people get lucky with rounded cables and they work OK anyway, because the hardware is robust enough to work past that, but it's still not guaranteed.

I'm not saying don't use them. I use them myself mainly because they're so much easier to route inside the case, but I try to use the shortest cables that will fit, and with the full knowledge that if I have drive problems switching to flat cables will be the first thing I'll try to resolve them.
 
Yahoolian
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Mon Apr 14, 2003 9:45 am

Maybe a "Both flat and round cables" option should be added to the poll?
 
muyuubyou
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Mon Apr 14, 2003 9:55 am

I'm still using the old standard ****. Hopefully I'll jump directly to SATA soon. That WD-Raptor is just too sexy. :D
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pez-king
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Mon Apr 14, 2003 9:59 am

Flat ribbons all the way. Although the idea of round or at least smaller ide sounds appealing, it just isn't worth putting out the extra cash for rounded ones, to me.

The flat ribbons were made flat for a reason. :-?
 
Forge
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Mon Apr 14, 2003 11:40 am

I used to use round, but found that a lot of little, hard to trace bugs went away when I went back to flat. I'd probably use rounded cables on CDroms, but only because they're so low speed that cross-talk shouldn't be a big issue.
 
absinthexl
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Mon Apr 14, 2003 12:58 pm

Flat for now. It's sad, because I have serial ATA connectors on this motherboard that aren't bing used...
 
CTG
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Mon Apr 14, 2003 1:17 pm

Round on the floppy, CD-R and CD-RW. Flat for the IDE HDD.

I just don't trust the round cables on ATA-100+.
 
eckslax
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Mon Apr 14, 2003 6:08 pm

A serial ATA cable makes a round IDE cable look like a monster. Too bad that we didn't adopt the standard a while ago.
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"Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government finds a need for the money it gets." - Ronald Reagan
 
Starfalcon
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Tue Apr 15, 2003 12:27 am

True eckslax, the serial ATA cables are much better than the current stuff. I am looking forward to when this becomes the standard and we can all lay our flat cables to rest for good.
 
etilena
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Tue Apr 15, 2003 1:29 am

Use round. Never had a problem with them, well, so far anyway.
*yawn*
 
SpotTheCat
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Fri Apr 18, 2003 4:05 pm

I can't wait to make use of my dual channel SATA

I figure I'll have my A7N8X for a LONG time, and when I get another HDD I'll be out of drive space, so it's off to on board SATA for me :)
 
Alex
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Fri Apr 18, 2003 5:24 pm

I hope to upgrade to 2x WD Serial ATA 10k rpm drives as soon as I can, then never worry about "round cables" or "flat cables."

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