Am Don, 10 Mai 2001 schrieb MAHRF@de.ibm.com:
Hi!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't 40cm (about 16") the maximum cable length for EIDE cables? Especially for UDMA connections? That would explain that your drives work now.
Ferdinand Mahr
You are absolutely right. That's the reason why I finally cut my cable to 12" which is the shortest length I could use in the B&W tower. I tried the long cable for various reasons. When you search the internet for linux, PPC and B&W G3 you will find Robert's Blue & White G3 page: http://linuxppc.org/hardware/blueg3/ where he discribes which equipment he's added to his B&W G3. He uses a "Maxtor 92732U8 connected through a standard 24" UltraATA 80-conductor IDE cable from Fry's". And I think he uses the 24" cable because of the same reason as I did: you cannot mount a second HD on top of the first one in a Rev.1 B&W tower. You have to place them next to each other. A ribbon cable has to be quite long for this purpose if you don't want it all scrunch. So I connected my first 30 GB drive (which was a WD) and the built in 6 GB drive with this 24" cable and they worked perfecly together for almost a year till the WD crashed. The really interesting thing for me was, that if you use two UDMA capable drives from the same manufacturer on the same cable, only one will work. But anyway you're right. Using an unspecified cable can lead to unexpected behaviour. Regards Micha