I've seen those extenders in our local shops so they do exist. But in a
pinch when I was living on top of a mountain and didn't want to make the 3
hour drive into the city, I just extended the wires myself by cutting them
in the middle, added the needed length of extra wire of the same (roughly)
guage and then soldered and insulated them together. Worked perfectly.
Granted not everybody will want to cut the cables of their power supply or
have the ability to solder them properly, but it worked just fine for me in
a pinch.
BTW, ANYBODY THAT TRYS IS, *UNPLUG THE POWER SUPPLY FROM THE ELECTRIC WALL
SOCKET BEFORE DOING IG*. Did I really need to mention that? Probably.
"Alias" <Alias@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news

2286351-5232-48A1-8929-E94884DCA580@microsoft.com...
> Juan and KGMountainman,
>
> I found a 4 plug power cable tucked and hidden away inside my computer
> case.
> It actually splits off the SATA connector for the DVD drive, how weird.
> Anyway, the power connector is very short and won't reach far enough to
> connect to my IDE drive inside the drive bay.
>
> I think it's possible to purchase extenders for the power cable which
> should
> allow me to connect it to the IDE drive. Then all I need to do is get the
> PCI IDE controller and plug the data cable into it, right!
>
> "Alias" wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I just bought a new Dell system which came with 250GB SATA drive. I want
>> to
>> add my older 80GB IDE drive into the new system but the all the cables
>> coming
>> off the power supply look like SATA power connector.
>>
>> Is is possible for me to use the IDE drive in the new OptiPlex system?
>> This
>> SATA stuff is totally new for me so I don't know much about how to get
>> other
>> things to co-exist with it. Can somebody please school this old dawg on
>> this
>> new tech stuff :-)
>>
>> -A