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sliktoys

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 27, 2021
4
1
My iMac G3/333 has a bad HDD/CD ribbon cable. Having a heck of a time finding a replacement online. Is there something compatible I can use? Specificaly the CD part of the cable, the hard Drive cable works fine, cd cable has been burned some how.
 
Unless I'm missing something, those systems just use standard IDE ribbon cables. But you say yours has been burned? Sure, an easy fix should just be to go to any vendor who sells multi dual device cables, but I'd be more worried about the burning that happened. Can you go into more detail about that? Perhaps provide some pictures? Last thing we want is for a new cable to just cause a short somewhere else.
 
Unless I'm missing something, those systems just use standard IDE ribbon cables. But you say yours has been burned? Sure, an easy fix should just be to go to any vendor who sells multi dual device cables, but I'd be more worried about the burning that happened. Can you go into more detail about that? Perhaps provide some pictures? Last thing we want is for a new cable to just cause a short somewhere else.
Sorry, it was rather late when I posted the question. The hard drive portion is a regular IDE. The cd drive has a thinner version of it. Looks like an ide but thinner. 50 pin. The previous owner tried to put a laptop hard drive in place of the cd drive and it caused the burning. Hope that helps.
 
I believe the CD drive used an ATAPI connection, slightly different than regular ATA/IDE.
Yes, it's a thinner connector but similar. It's almost the same as the hard Drive ribbon cable in a Apple TV Gen 1 but more pins.
 
Apple's part number for that cable is 922-3594
I found a few sites that listed that cable, but most do not have stock.
Look for yourself, using that part number.
I did not search too long, but the only one that I found in stock was from a UK supplier - a bit expensive for me, but there it is... https://www.applemacparts.co.uk/imac-hdcd-cable?search=922-3594
And, it is listed as NEW, not the usual USED.
It hurt but I went ahead and purchased this one. Not a big worry since I only paid $3 for the computer, I'm still ahead of the game and still less than $50 into this cool old machine.
 
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