I have a major problem that is pissing me off: I am installing a CD ROM drive into a new computer and the power ribbon is to short to reach it!!! Here is the criteria: 1)I can position the CD ROM drive as close as possible and it won't make a difference 2)moving the hard drive is not an option (one end of the ribbon is connected to it) My question is this: one end of the ribbon is green and fits into the corresponding green slot on the MB. Can I take that out and connect it to the CD ROM and replace it with the middle part of the ribbon? everything fits perfectly that but I'm not sure if this will work or if it's safe considering the colour coding. PLEASE HELP!!!!! THANKS :)

Hi, The wide flat ribbon cable is the data cable and needs to have one end on the motherboard. The middle connector is the slave IDE device / drive and end connector the master IDE device / drive, normally the hard disk. You cannot change this order. You may be able to connect the IDE devices you wish to run by using an ATA control card which fits in a PCI slot and use the connections from this to reach the various drives. On a normal motherboard if you have this card in the PCI slot closest to the CPU / Graphics card it should reach any IDE drive in any bay. Your IDE cable may be less than the 450mm 18" maximum length. If so buy a new one with the connectors is the right place or even have one made up. You can get longer cables but risk data degredation / loss IF the cable is only a four wire power cable, buy a short power cable extender. Ceri

It would appear you are talking about the interface cable being too short, which is nothing to do with power. These cables are available in different lengths. e.g. Problems can occur when a cable from a desktop is fitted in a tower as it can be too short. Watch out for the connectors on both the cable and the mobo as they ideally should be matching types, otherwise you may not be able to connect and/or damage may occur. The things to check are:- a) are they the pin missing type b) do they have the plastic locating lug on the side. Good luck - Keep us posted.

thanks but my question isn't really answered.... my concern now is that the green end of the cable is not fitted into the green slot on the MB, BUT evething still fits nicely together, should I worry about the fact that the two greens aren't connected to each other?

Yes, this is a problem. Signal quality will not be that good and it can cause errors during data transfer. As stated, one end of the cable is designed to fit into the system board. This is not an optional choice with 80 wire IDE cables. The other end of the cable is designed to go to the Master IDE device on the channel. Again this is not an optional choice. The connector in the middle can be connected to a Slave Device such as another disk drive or CD. This is an optional choice. You don't have to hook anything to the middle connector. Most system boards have two IDE connectors. The second one can be enabled (if not enabled by default in the BIOS) and a second cable can be plugged into it to support two additional drives. If both drives are CD-ROM drives, this can be a longer (18 inch) 40 wire cable where what is plugged where is not all that important. It is normal practice to place CD-Rom drives on the second cable in larger systems. But if an 80 wire cable like the first one is used, you still must plug the correct end into the system board and the Master device must still go on the end of the cable, with the slave in the middle being optional.

what exactly is the name of this cable so I know what to ask for in the store...

IDE interface cable. Good luck - Keep us posted.