IDE CABLE BURNING!!! on epos system (pics inside)

hi. my dad bought an epos style computer for his small business, and wanted me to reinstall windows + add the software onto it.

its called a J2 8200. its verysmall, and has a touchscreen mounted to it, and about 8 serial ports!
spec=celeron 1ghz, 128ram, 20gb, 8meg SMA....and thats about it.

problem was, it had no cd drive to install windows. i noticed a catch on the side, which opend to reveal an IDE connector and a PCMCIA slot.

i hooked up my dvd-rom drive to a jumpstarted powersupply (which i kno works fine), and connected it to the ide in side of epos.

1. turned on the psu.....dvd started, evrything is fine.
2. pushed the power button on epos. END WIRE IN IDE RIBBON BEGINS TO BURN, AND SMOKE COMES OUT. i pulled out the plugs imediately.

ill post some pics if any one wants any...???

Was the burning at the device end or the motherboard end of the cable?

it was down the whole cable. it was on the end wire, opposite side to the red line

sure it is a standard IDE connector and not something custom?

yep, i opened it up before. the slot on the side has an ide extension inside that connects directly to 1 part of the plit mobo, right next to another ide channel and is connected to the hard drive. theres ony 2 channels, and the bios shows 2 ide channels, so it must be.

2 ide channels?? lol, not any more!

what you have said you have done, under normal circumstances would work - even if you got the ide cable round the wrong way it would not burn out like that.

Its possible the cable was damaged, but to burn a cable out you need to put a load down it, and thats a data cable. The load would be carried by the psu connector, thats why the cables are thick.

So around about now, i'd stat wondering how close it actually does resemble being a normal pc... :D

Nox

Ouch, must of been a serious amount of energy going through that cable for it to literally burn.

The power supply works 100% fine?

ye, its fine :S its only 150watt LOL

ive now taken it all apart, and used a 3way ide connector instead of the old 2way for the hard drive, and ive connected an intrnal cd drive on the same channel as the hdd. its installing windows server 2003 as we speak. ill take some pics of it running in parts.

the split mobo is GAYY!!!!!!!! by the way.

and no, the cable was fine, coz i tried with another BRAND NEW one

sounds like the ide channel had a fault at the socket causing the short. should get the thing swapped out if you can.

I have heard of IDE cables doing all sorts of things when they're connected wrongly, ie, misaligned, so you might want to check that.

the system is worth £1500+
we got it for £450 (ebay) so we cant. i have noticed a laptop size cdrom space hidden in it, so my problems are over i guess =D