creative flat cables

[Bob_thing]

I have an audigy zs platinum and it has a flat unsheilded ide looking cable I e-mailed creative about getting rounded cables to which they replied we have no answers. I heard u can use any ide cable as long as it has all 40 pins open. whether that is true or not can anybody direct me to a blue uv (good quality) 18" one device rounded cable that would work on any sound blaster drive bay expansion device?

[AKA_RA]

well pretty much any cable should do as long as you line up the pins correctly. how many pins wide is the connection? if its 20x2 then pretty much any ide cable will work, such as the one here

http://www.xoxide.com/uvsesichidec.html

[FyR]

Either above or try ebay mate, i ogt mine of there.

[crenn]

Or you can sleeve it yourself. But buying a pre made cable is better....

[Bob_thing]

does anybody know it works from experience? not to doubt anybody but I heard through the grapevine that it doesnt work and i should round it myself... its not that I am incapable, its mainly the fact that it looks like crap, its not uv sensitive, it isnt sheilded, and its sesceptible to falling apart or being damaged in some way. basically I would rather buy it i just would like to know it would work for sure, that and creative made it sound like my sound card would burst into flames if I used anything but a creative cable.

[AKA_RA]

if you could get a pic of the cable that came with it and the pins you plug it into, i could get a better idea of wether or not itll work. but if you really think about it, a rounded cable serves the same purpose as a ribbon cable really, its not like any wires are crossed or anything. now if you were using a floppy cable, on the other hand, you may have issues(if youve ever seen a floppy ribbon theres a twist in it). i would have guessed that its just using the cable for sending or recieving signals but there may be power running through the ribbon considering it has a fire wire port on the front panel. so my bet is that yes, there will be sparks if you mess it up.

EDIT:found a big enough pic of the card and i counted the pins, if the cable covers the pins labeld as the spdif pins as well as the other 13 rows, then it looks like were dealing with a straight shot from the card to the front panel, all you would have to do is make sure that the cable was positioned correctly.

EDIT #2: Found a pic of the front panel with an angle that allowed me to also see those pins and im pretty sure that if you just hook up any old ide cable, rounded or not to, between the card and the front panel with no problems what so ever. the easiest way to make sure you got it right would be to make sure the spdif i/o pins were lined up.

EDIT #3: I apologize for editing this post so many times, but i found a pic of the actual cable that came with the unit, and it confirmed my suspisions. you have, beyond a doubt, a regular, single device IDE cable with a tiny piece of plastic placed into it so it only fits one way. all you have to do is take a tiny dab of glue, model glue would work very well here, and duplicate the placement of the plastic bits in the original cable. itll be simple to do since the cables have a little nub telling you that theyre facing the same way. and dont worry too much about short circuiting anything, i saw that there was a power cable included so the firewire most likely gets its power from that and not the ribbon. i highly doubt there will be any damage to the card by using a differant cable if you follow my suggestions. happy modding :)

[Bob_thing]

Thnx

[jdbnsn]

Just to add a little for the second option, you can round it yourself to customize the length and come up with some pretty cool colors, plus it's cheaper. I did it to an IDE cable using a razor blade and some sleeving.

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f395/jdbnsn/wooden%20mc/scsicable.jpg