Why do they call an 80 wire IDE/ATA cable 80 wire when it only has 40 wires?
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M$3 Answers
I counted the number of wires myself so that I could answer this question.
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M$
With the introduction of ATA-5, parallel ATA cables with 80 wires became standard.
As you can see, there are two types of ATA cables. Why do they call an ATA cable 80 wires when it only has 40 wires, I do not know. They're probably mistaken. You should be able to see the difference between 40 (bottom) and 80 (top) wires in the picture below.
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M$
For example if lets say a 2 was sent down the old cable and the cable went past a power lead. The power lead might have caused interference with the cable and caused it to become a 3. Therefore when it is read a the other end there could be all sorts of problems.
In the newer 80 cable splits the signal into two part and it is put back together at the other end. For example to send the same 2 the newer cable might split it into a 3 and 1 and send one half down one wire and the other half down the another. The signal could then be reconsructed at the other end by minusing them from each other. If the same interference, as above, were to occur to this signal, because the wires are so close together the same interference would occur. This could cause the 3 to change to 4 and the 1 would change to 2. Consequently when the signal is reconstruced at the other end 4 - 2 = 2. So even though interference has occured the signal still stays the same eliminating errors.
Of course this method is not fool-proof. Errors still occur but they are much less frequent.
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M$
props for counting the number of wires...