[rescue] The fat lady. . .

[Brian Hechinger]

> Amy wrote:
> not all are keyed (unfortunately). the unkeyed ones from 6-8 years ago
> were my downfall.
> Kurt wrote:
> My IDE cables and drives are keyed.  Of course, That was years ago - I
> haven't bought IDE since mid-'96 or so...

my experience is as such:

i've used IDE twice in my life.  the first time, in the early 90's when i bought
a 386 with a 90M IDE drive in, uhm, '92 and the second time when i was in brasil
several years ago.

the first time was to be the last, but for the two years i was in brasil i
didn't have much of a choice.  depressing lack of nice computers in that
country.  probably since no companies ever got rid of anything until it was
truely dead.  shame, IBM does big business there, i'm sure there are quite a
few nice computers around down there.

anyway, i stray from the point.  in both instances none of the IDE cables were
keyed.  which is odd since all the controllers and drives are.  anyway, i've
never seen IDE cables that were keyed.

maybe has something to do with the quality of the machines.  the lack of that
little tab of plastic probably saves the major computer manufacturer a couple
hundred dollars a year.  that's big money. </dripping sarcasm>

-brian