hi, I want to mod an IDE cable (40 pin). The one that goes to my dvd burner from the mobo. heres my story. i bought an after market IDE cable , but i would like to shorten it so that there isnt a lot of cable clutter in my tower.
i choppped it of at the slave plug and that is the right length for what i want but when i installed it into the pc i am doing all my mod tests on ,the odd wouldnty recognize it when i put a cd into it. Why is that?:confused:

you see i have a led screen on the front of my tower that shows such things as date time hdd cd/rom fan speeds and system temps. and i really want to hook up the the sensor that shows that the cd rom drive is working so that is why i want to chop the IDE cable just after the slave socket and leave a bit extra wires from the 25th and 26th wire so that i can hoook the sensor wires to it and it shows on the screen that it is working.(they are the wires according to the manual that came with the tower to hook up to for making the cd/dvd rom display work.

can an IDE cable be modded (i.e cut shorter) or am i treading on thin ice with this one?

If there is any part of this question you dont understand please let me know and i will try to simplify it it 4 u nas best i can:)

Hi,

It should have worked just fine.

What could have happened is when you cut the extra cable lenght very small pieces of wire were touching each other, creating a short-circuit between the wires. So I'd check closely on the end that you cut so see whether small wires are touching each other or not. I would even use a blade to separate the wires' end. I hope I was clear in my explanation.

Cheers,
Gabriel.

that worked a treat gabriel. you were 100% correct, thanx for advice:)

YOU MUST TERMINATE @ END! JK JK Lmao(damn scsi)