Geek Question

[c9]

I have a floppy drive in my desktop PC at home. It uses a standard 34-pin three-connector ribbon cable to operate. It works fine, although it's rarely needed.

As part of a recent purchase, I picked up a very on-sale* rounded floppy drive 34-pin cable. Rounded cables, for those unfamiliar, look like little pipes instead of big wide ribbons, and allow better airflow. It features little bumps on the connectors to ensure correct insertion. But when I insert it, the wiring is actually backwards, so the drive no longer works. How do I know it doesn't work? The light on the drive stays on constantly, which equals a cable that's backwards on one end. The cable cannot be reversed on either end, as the slot restricts which side the bump can slide in.

Has floppy drive cabling technology changed, and I just missed it? I teach this shit, so I (a) doubt it and (b) would be really annoyed.


* foreboding?

Comments

[c9.livejournal.com]

It's a 2-connector rounded cable. And I'm about 90% certain I tried reversing it. I will try again just to be sure, but since I never use the damn drive it's really just pride.

NCIX was offering that cable for cheap, not IDE cables unfortunately.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

It could very well be a bum cable. It's not unheard of... of course, with a two-connector cable, the twist *probably* isn't necessary.

[c9.livejournal.com]

A careful examination tells me that there is a twist in it (yay for rainbow coloured wires!). So it's acting as the end connector, not the (non-existent) middle connector. I didn't get a chance to research any further than that.