The old 40 conducter cables were used on the UDMA mode 2 (33) PC's.  When the speeds 
went to UDMA mode 4, 5 and 6 (66, 100, 133) speeds, the cables were made with a ground 
wire between each conductor.  Thus, there are twice as many wires on the ribbon and 
they are a lot thinner than the old 40 cables.  If you compare them side by side, 
you can see the difference.

As for the memory, if it is the same make and model board, then there shouldn't be 
an issue, but if it is different, even different model boards from the same manufacturer 
can require different memory.  As a side note to this, I had one new board that had 
a bad memory controller and would throw CRC errors from the drives on any memory 
I tried on the first slot..  Eventually they all failed very quickly.  Have only 
observed a handful of boards out of thousands do this, but it does happen.

There is a picture here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Technology_Attachment

that you can enlarge and sort of see the difference between the conductor size and 
amount of conductors in the cable as well as an explanation of the two.. 







On Friday, October 12, 2007 at 10:20 am, PCnerd wrote:

>I don't think my RAM are incompatible...since i'm using the same ones before the 

>board is changed. back then the system works perfectly. But nevertheless i will 
still 

>check my ram.

>

>The 80 conductor cable u mentioned is......? (forgive my ignorance, i'm a PC nerd)

>

>

> 

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