Installing and Replacing Desktop Board Components 
43 
Connecting the IDE Cable 
The IDE cable can be used to connect two IDE drives to the Desktop Board.  The cable 
supports the ATA-66/100 transfer protocol.  Figure 19 shows the correct installation of 
the cable. 
 
NOTES 
ATA-66/100 compatible cables are backward compatible with drives using slower IDE 
transfer protocols.  If an ATA-66/100 disk drive and a disk drive using any other IDE 
transfer protocol are attached to the same cable, the maximum transfer rate between 
the drives may be reduced to that of the slowest drive. 
Do not connect an ATA device as a slave on the same IDE cable as an ATAPI master 
device.  For example, do not connect an ATA hard drive as a slave to an ATAPI 
CD-ROM drive. 
For correct function of the cable: 
1.  Observe the precautions in "Before You Begin" on page 27. 
2.  Attach the cable end with the single connect
or (blue) to the Intel Desktop Board 
(Figure 19, A). 
3.  Attach the cable end with the two cl
osely spaced connectors (gray and black) to 
the drives (Figure 19, B). 
 
Figure 19.  Connecting the IDE Cable