In all our hardware problem discussions there is one problem that I too often forget to mention. The move to ATA66 and ATA100 so far eliminates it, but it crops up duing upgrades of older systems.
IDE cable length! Bottom line: UDMA will not work reliably on an IDE cable longer than 18".
I helped a friend over the weekend on a motherboard swap that went badly. (Yes, new MB was a VIA chipset :-) Initialy I failed to notice he had a very long cable (~30") on his C: drive. Replacing the cable with the proper <18" lenght and deleting everything for the new motherboard in safe mode, finally let PnP restore the system after a few more reboots.
If you are having dropped frames, poor performance, or windows is more unstable than usual, check those IDE cable lengths!
I've never seen an ATA66 80-pin cable that exceeded 18". If some turkey starts selling them, don't buy! no matter how much easer it makes filling your tower case with hard drives!
--wally.
IDE cable length! Bottom line: UDMA will not work reliably on an IDE cable longer than 18".
I helped a friend over the weekend on a motherboard swap that went badly. (Yes, new MB was a VIA chipset :-) Initialy I failed to notice he had a very long cable (~30") on his C: drive. Replacing the cable with the proper <18" lenght and deleting everything for the new motherboard in safe mode, finally let PnP restore the system after a few more reboots.
If you are having dropped frames, poor performance, or windows is more unstable than usual, check those IDE cable lengths!
I've never seen an ATA66 80-pin cable that exceeded 18". If some turkey starts selling them, don't buy! no matter how much easer it makes filling your tower case with hard drives!
--wally.
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