violar35•16d agoProlific Poster

I was at the Goodwill in Tacoma yesterday and they had a whole bin of old IDE ribbon cables for a dollar each.

Just stood there for a minute looking at them. Felt like a museum piece. I haven't needed one in maybe 8 years, but I still remember the exact sound of plugging them in, that little click. Now everything's just these tiny SATA cables or M.2 slots you can't even see. It's cleaner, sure, but there was something about wrestling with that wide ribbon to get airflow. What's the oldest piece of tech you still keep in your kit just in case?

3 comments

3 Comments

murphy.aaron16d ago

Actually, IDE cables were 40 or 80 pins, not 34. The 34-pin ones were for floppy drives.

wilson.joseph16d ago

Yeah, that's right. The 40-pin cables were for regular IDE drives. They switched to 80-wire cables later for the faster ATA/66 and up, but they still had 40 pins. The 34-pin floppy cable is totally different, you'd never mix them up by sight.

seth_singh2016d ago

Remember the master/slave jumpers on those old drives? Had to get those right before the ribbon cable even mattered lol. Felt like solving a puzzle every time.