I am having alot of problems of late with my HD cable. Every couple of days when carrying the player to and from work or to and from the house it might get knocked around in the Empeg Bag I keep it in. I get to where I am going, either plug it into AC or slide it into the car sled and **POOF**....NO HARD DISK FOUND CONTACT SUPPORT. So I get out the allen wrench and screw driver. I open the case up unplug the Cable from the board and press the ends together with two hard cover books. Replace cable on board boot up and I am back in business. My question is, is there a better way to fix the cable like hot glue on the crimp to help hold it together like on the drives. Or if not I am willing to make my own cable if someone could tell me what I need for connectors and type of ribbon cable. Any idea where is a good place to order the parts from?

Before anyone chimes in about the IDE Header let me add this. I checked out the IDE header on the motherboard under a microscope and it looks OK.

Slightly diverging from topic.

There have been a lot of requests for additional hard drive cables lately. I do not know what stock is available through Rob and support, but it might be worthwhile to put together a bulk order in the US. I do not want to do this if someone out there has a box of them sitting around, but if there are only a few out there, I will order a batch.

Can anyone:

a) give a good recommendation for a custom cable place (not the one that did the first round of cables, thanks... )
b) give me the exact specifications (length, connector part numbers, orientation, fold distances, etc.) that I would need to pass over to a custom cable place to get them built.

Thanks! Now back to our original thread.

Right now, support is the only place I know of that has the cables available. Hot glue should help a bit as well.

If you do a bulk order, I would be willing to work with you over here in the U.S. I am located outside Hartford, CT and have easy access for shipping and packaging here at work. Keep this in mind a large order could be put together.

You could do it by hand without going to a custom cable place. The ribbon cable and connectors are all standard parts off the shelf so you just need a IDC crimping tool. May be annoying doing a large number though but still not as bad as what Shonky had to do with the replacement harnesses.

I think Rob had them made up and is shaping them by hand. I saw him do this a few times in Amersfoort. Take out a long, flat cable and fold it into an empeg cable.

Seeing as how January 1st is less than 1 month away, I think we should help Rob out by holding-off on any bulk parts purchases. I personally think the guy deserves to be a monopoly.

Oh, agreed. I do not want to duplicate anything that he is doing. If he has them and is building them, that is fine. My only reason for getting them made would have been if they were not available otherwise.

Not to step on anyone's toes, but we're making up the first prototype replacement cable today. If anyone's interested. Let me know.

Stu

The first prototype works fine. Here it is next to the OEM cable which is on the left:



Stu

Another picture from the other side.



Stu

My question is, is there a better way to fix the cable like hot glue on the crimp to help hold it together like on the drives.

If it works after squishing it with the books, and if you're sure you don't have one of the other problems listed in the "no hard disk found" FAQ entry, then you probably don't need a new cable or any better crimping, it will most likely be just fine as-is.

If you want to make sure the cable sticks to the disk drive itself without coming undone, then you can hot-glue it as illustrated in the drive upgrade guide. But that's a different issue than the crimp on the connector.

The problem is that it only works temporarily when I squish it with a couple of books. It seems to loosen up after being knocked around a bit. I am gonna try hot gluing the crimp that connects the IDE header and see if it keeps the crimp nice and tight. Other wise I am gonna be looking to Stu and hope his version holds up better than the OEM ones.

The problem is that it only works temporarily when I squish it with a couple of books.

Then I would posit that you've likely got another problem other than the crimp on the connector. Possibly the IDE header solder joints. Definitely look through all the items in the FAQ entry and check each possibility carefully.

If you're making custom ones up by hand, then it might be an idea to add about 1cm of length between the two close connectors (main board and first HDD). We'd have sorta liked to do this in production, but the Samtec cables we had you couldn't specify things that accurately (I believe it was 1" increments)

Hugo

I had the same problem and it came back often. All the crimps on the cable looked fine to me, but they still didn't seem to work. My only solution was to make a new cable. I bought the parts online and the crimping was much easier than I thought it would be.

See tis post for more info:
http://empeg.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_general&Number=189530

I'll bet the partial insertion of the probes rubbed the wires raw and maybe even cut them.

Next time, I'll try harder for the double entendre.

Hey Stu,

Is it safe to assume you've incorporated Hugo's suggestion into your cables?

--Nathan

If you want us to we can. We haven't done it yet. My worry is that too much length will put tension on the connectors, as the cable will buckle slightly. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but that's how I see it.

Stu

Ok, yeah, that's reasonable. I'm about to add a second drive, so hopefully soon I'll have a better clue.

--Nathan