rkauer wrote:
some 80 wires IDE cables use "cable select" instead the "normal" straight pins. Those C-S cables must be avoided.
AFAIK all 80 strand cables are "cable select" cables (or at least they are supposed to be).
Getting technical, pin 28 is the cable select pin. The host adapter is supposed to ground this pin; if a device sees that the pin is grounded, it becomes the master device; if it sees that pin 28 is open, the device becomes the slave device. The Grey connector on an 80-strand cable has pin 28 open (unconnected) and the black connector has pin 28 wired through to the blue connector.
The only problem I know of (which isnt really a problem) is that the Amiga motherboard's IDE connector doesn't ground pin 28 as it should. It isn't connected to anything, it's just floating open (which effectively makes everything a slave).
But it doesn't matter! Most devices have jumpers to force master/slave operation.
However if you come across a device with no such jumpers, and you feel brave you can wire pin 28 to pin 30 (which is easy as they are next to each other) on the Amiga connector and now it should now be correct in terms of the IDE spec.
Such a modification should allow you to use an Amiga with these cables and two devices with their jumpers set to CS (or no jumpers at all).
