Building FAQ

Bosco

Hi folks, just to add my 2 cents....

The red stripe on the ribbon cable (IDE and Floppy) does denote pin 1. By convention manufacturers these days put pin 1 on the edge closest to the power connector, but this is just a convention and is nowhere set in stone. In my time I have seen drives that have pin 1 on the other side, though they are admitedly very rare; they are usually only found in older machines where the drives were made by the same company that made the machine, or were made specifically for the computer manufacturer by the drive manufacturer.

The power sockets on drives are 'keyed' to that the connector cannot be inserted incorrectly without forcing it. To advise someone to insert a power connector with a given colour facing a given direction is to potentially give bad advice, as the orientation of power sockets is, AFAIK, not standardised.

For the above reasons, a picture of the connections on your own drives will very (very very) probably help someone, but there is a chance (though small) that it will misslead.

Bosco

beaver

Those are the kind of exceptions that cannot properly be covered in an FAQ. Practically by definition an FAQ on such a subject cannot be accurate 100% of the time...