[geeks] weird slowness??

[der Mouse]

> ([...].  The HD is in Master, the DVD in slave; the HD is on the end
> of the cable then, there is a long stretch of cable, then the DVD
> drive, then a short stretch of cable, then the motherboard.  That's
> the only way it will fit due to the weird case.)

Well, aside from what everyone else has suggested about avoiding
putting them onj the same conjtroller, is the cabling between the board
and the disk the same whether or not the DVD drive is there?

I mention this because modern IDE cables are _not_ symmetric, that is,
they are not simple buses with all connectors hooked up to the bus
lines the same way.  The motherboard connector is different from the
device connectors.  I don't know enough about the details to know what
goes wrong if you plug a device connector into the board and the host's
connector into a device, but it can't be good.

And, usually, the cable between the special (host) connector and the
middle (device) connector is substantially longer than the cable
between the device connectors.  If you've got one of these cables and
it's reversed, that could be contributing.

The cables in question are the 80-wire ones - if the cable has only 40
wires, this isn't what's wrong.

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