How to: Round up and sleeve dem flat IDE cables!

By: Randall Hill, a.k.a. dynam!c

Sick of those flat grey space-taking IDE cables that are sitting there in your system, waiting to be modded? Why spend ridiculous amounts of cash on pre-rounded IDE cables when you can do it yourself!? Of course, that is the modder's mentality. Well, I decided to do this for my own system, because I had some flat IDE cables and some sleeving laying around.

Tools of the trade: Knife / razor

-Flat one device (preferred) IDE cable

-A few feet of large-sized wire sleeving

-Heatshrink (or electrical tape for poor people like me)

So, this is what we start out with, a boring old flat IDE cable, waiting to be rounded

.

As you can see, I have a nice BIG, roomy space to work with. No, but really, you should give yourself some room. Cramping yourself up with a sharp knife or razor really isn't a good idea.

Okay, so let's get down on this rounding thing. In the end, you want it to look something like your sleeved PSU wires, cept with different connectors on the ends! This mod really shouldn't take you more than around 15 or 20 minutes to complete if you're really careful and methodical.

It's time to cut stuff! Now, you want to get a nice steady grip on the knife, and have one hand holding down the cable. When cutting the cable, you can pretty much cut the ribbons once about every 2 or 3 strands. I like to mix it up a bit, so I cut at random small intervals. (After all, my name IS dynamic!....C'mon, I'm not that cheesey....Am I?....).

Also, when you are cutting, do NOT cut the length of the cable! Cut just enough to get your fingers in there and strip it the rest of the way, otherwise you run way too much of a risk of cutting a wire and ruining your entire mod project.

This was my first cut, turned out pretty well. Actually once I cut the rubber shielding on one wire, and exposed a bit of the copper. No problems, still works well and should be fine as far as safety goes. Be careful though, this was just a little scratch in the rubber shielding.

And this is what it looked like after I cut and stripped all of the ribbons....

Yep, looks like a mess now, but you just wait until it's sleeved and ready to look pretty in your modded case! To keep the ribbons together, you should tape it in the middle, similar to this picture.

The next step is to get the shielding itself ON to the cable. It may look impossible because of the width of the connectors, but there is an easy way to get around that. Fold the connectors in to the wires so that it matches up length-wise with the cables. Here is a picture if you're not sure what I mean.

Okay, so now you should have the sleeving going over the cable. You can use my technique for getting the sleeving over the cable if you have problems. I like to slide the cable in a bit, then make the cable bunch up in the middle between my hold on the cable and sleeve, then letting the bottom part of the sleeving go down onto the cable.

This should get the sleeving on their very well. The sleeving will fray alot. One thing you can do to prevent this is to melt the tips of the sleeving slightly, so that they do not fray. Don't worry, you will fix this problem in the next step.

Now it's time to secure the sleeving and get the fraying thing down. I am using electrical tape because I just happen to be fresh out of heatshrink right now. I will assume that you do have heatshrink.

Cut a peice of the heatshrink a little bit larger than the amount of fraying you have. Now, slip it over the connectors and over the frayed part of the end of the sleeving and the cable. Shrink the heatshrink with a blow dryer or what have you, and make sure it's on there nice and firmly so it won't come out very easily. It should look something like this now.

And here it is in the case....

So, overall, this is a relatively simple but effective and useful mod project. Now look how much prettier it is compared to that other flat IDE cable in my case! Sleeving wires also helps to improve airflow within your case, and will help insure that you're PC is running at nice, cool temperatures.

Until next time! Happy modding!