Replacement disk cable

Hi folks,

I decided to upgrade my unit to a larger disk (120GB - under the 128GB size limitation though I still tried both the bigdisk image and the stock empeg one) but during the course of this I damaged my unit's IDE cable (the primary drive header has come off).

I would like to replace this cable asap so, does anyone know whether a standard laptop cable will suffice or whether I have to purchase a special cable - I know that special cables exist, and I will probably order one anyway...but that takes longer than just going to a PC store later today

Thanks,

Jon.

I think I'll try ordering the Eutronix one anyway, but I would like to use a standard laptop cable. Is this even remotely possible?

Jon.

The FAQ says you should use the correct cable to make sure the shock mounting works. But seeing as its not in your car yet, a generic cable will probably work fine for your builder image, putting some music on and playing around while you wait for the Eutronix one to turn up.

Be careful with the IDE header on the motherboard as its fragile and as yours is 'fresh out of the box' it hasn't been fixed by anyone to make it a little more robust.

So following up to myself. Of course I could have asked myself how likely it is that a PC store would have a 44 pin 2.5" IDE cable. They don't generally have them - though suggestions for places that do are most welcome. The alternative seems to be to recrimp this cable, but then I need to find somewhere that sells a crimping tool, connectors, and so forth.

Probably, it's best to just not be inpatient and wait for the Eutronix one I just ordered the "extended" cable since I'm hoping that is slightly longer between the host board header and the first drive...but I asked them to send the OEM one if that's not the case - I don't plan on using two drives, so having 2" of extra cable between the connectors is fairly useless.

Indeed it's not in the MX5 yet, but now that I can upgrade it (having setup a virt instance to run the Rio tools), and that it actually works (aside from the disk cable), I feel that next month will be finally the time to do it

Jon.

Yeah... I was wondering the same thing, its not really something you can just go and pick up somewhere.

But yeah, good work on getting the Windows tools working under Linux KVM. I'm excited that you're finally playing around with it and going to get it installed in your car

jcm : what country are you in?

I'm in Cambridge, MA, United States. I ordered a Eutronix cable yesterday and hope to have it installed tomorrow.

Ah, fine - international can take an age to ship so if you were UK I was going to offer to drop a spare laptop one in the post until you got a proper one.

Oh, I used to be UK, but now I'm in the other Cambridge

Anyway, thanks for the offer LittleBlueThing, but I got a Eutronix (thanks Stuart) cable in the mail today and have now successfully re-initialized this unit. It's got the latest hijack and 120GB. I didn't bother going for the larger experimental partition setup as that strikes me as only necessary if you're going much over 120.

Note: I almost had trouble getting a PATA disk in the store, so now might be a good time in general to think about upgrading/keeping a spare around. I can't believe we've killed off that disk standard so quickly after SATA - stores seem completely uninterested in legacy PC upgrades here.

Jon.

Mmmm.. yes, it's getting to the critical point now.. my local wholesaler lists only 80GB and a 250GB ($63) PATA mobile drives now.

Yeah, though 250GB for $89.99 (price without tax) isn't bad. And it's working fine with the bigdisk kernel. I think I'll buy another disk soon - no reason to have two disks installed (I've got the larger swap partition) but spares have their uses.