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Installing and Replacing Desktop Board Components
31
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 9 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:
1. Attach the cable end with the single blue connector to the desktop board (see Figure 9, A).
2. Attach the cable end with the two closely spaced black and gray connectors to the drives
(see Figure 9, B).