Installing and Replacing Desktop Board Components
25
Connecting the IDE Cable
The Intel
®
boxed desktop board package includes an IDE cable. The cable connects two drives to
the desktop board. The cable supports both ATA-66 and ATA-100 transfer protocols and is
backward compatible with drives using slower IDE transfer protocols. Figure 8 shows the correct
installation of the cable.
✏
NOTE
ATA-66/100 compatible cables are backward compatible with drives using slower IDE transfer
protocols. If an ATA-66/100 disk drive and a disk drive using any other IDE transfer protocol are
attached to the same cable, the maximum transfer rate between the drives may be reduced to that
of the slowest drive.
✏
NOTE
Do not connect an ATA device as a slave on the same IDE cable as an ATAPI master device. For
example, do not connect an ATA hard drive as a slave to an ATAPI CD-ROM drive.
For correct function of the cable:
•
Attach the cable end with the single blue connector to the desktop board (see Figure 8, A).
•
Attach the cable end with the two closely spaced black and gray connectors to the drives
(see Figure 8, B).
OM15856
B
A
Figure 8. Connecting the IDE Cable