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Old 17th September 2005 | 19:28
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Saab Dastard
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Joined: Mar 2001
: PPL
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From: Twickenham, home of rugby
If the 40-pin ribbon cable from your current PC fits, then it is an IDE drive.

AFAIR, IDE drives became standard around the time that the 386 was replaced with the 486, so virtually all PCs of 486 and above were built with IDE drives.

SCSI drives were rarely fitted to desktop PCs, as they were then considered "high performance" and "high capacity", so usually only found in servers and workstations (and Apple MACs!). Not impossible, just unlikely.

The most likely problem?

The early IDE drives had all 40 pins present - you had to read which was pin 1 to ensure you got the cable the right way around - and they didn't always have a slot on one side of the socket (same reason). However modern IDE drives have 1 pin missing and a slot cut out, so the modern cables have one pin hole blanked and this will need to be drilled out to get the cable onto the drive.

It can be done (I know, I've done it), but it is much easier if you can take the IDE cable from the old PC and use that.

SD
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