Bread Board from IDE Cables

Today we are going to be building a bread borad for protyping circuits. Most of the parts you have lying around. The idea here is not to replace large store bought bread boards but, to construct small units that could be part of a larger project.

Step 1: Gather Your Components

You will need

-IDE cable
-small amount of copper wire
-soldering iron and solder
-small piece of plastic
-small screwdriver to take apart the IDE Cable

Comments

[newbeatle]

WHAT AN AWESOME IDEA !!!! i have LOTS of IDE cables, those with 60 pins, and i never thought about using them in this aplication..... thanks for sharing your idea!!

best regards from mexico

[yoyology]

Couldn't you leave part of the ribbon attached, strip the individual ribbon wires, and solder those? Might be easier than soldering the pins.

No matter what, great upcycle. I'm going to give this a try!

[ilpug]

Perfect!

[batman96]

Female parallel ports work good too. ;)

[laxap]

Great idea, smart and useful!
I'm making some ASAP!

[ambrosiusamadeus]

Awesome! One of the better, practical projects I have seen on here in a long time. Well Done!

[Doom2099]

very cool project. breadboards are expensive. you helped a lot people today! keep it up!

[zoltzerino]

I got a 896 hole Board for 5 GBP From Rapid.

[iamsinned06]

i want to make a homemade ide to usb cable. can you give me schematic or diagram or how to do it yourself?

[cotton]

u need qa whole circut so goto a computer store and get a ide to usd adapter there round 20 buks to 60 bucks k

[rommel543]

Ah crap.. I just moved and threw out about 10 old IDE cables because (insert wonky music here) I thought I wouldn't use them for anything. Time to start savaging parts at work again.

[!Andrew_Modder!]

oh. ok lol a good use for your ide cables, haha. .....damn the ide!! oh ya they actually make SATA dvd and cd writers now!! so you can go 100% ide free!!! woot.. lol nice instructable

[Derin]

haha. .....damn the ide!! oh ya they actually make SATA dvd and cd writers now!! so you can go 100% ide free!!!

Invalid.
Correction:

haha. .....damn the sata!! oh ya they actually make IDE dvd and cd writers now!! so you can go 100% sata free!!!

[tinkerC]

I like SATA. The SATA Hard Drives have more room than an IDE one. CDs and DVDs can't keep up with SATA speeds, but SATA is easier to wire.

[Derin]

OK,I agree now after having to hook up an IDE HD to my PC.The drawback of IDE is Master/Slave.

[tinkerC]

Meaning that there is one drive selected to boot from and you need to move the jumpers to change it? That is a flaw in the OS to need that.

[Derin]

No,if you put it on the wrong jumper it won't work.And it is a pain to put them on Cable Select.

[tinkerC]

Ouch. There must be a better way....

[juggler4real]

WHERE CAN I GET IDE CABLES

[Davetech]

I thought this might be even better than sliced bread, so I put 4 IDE connectors together and soldered them up. I was happy with the result in general, but a bit miffed when I plugged in an IC. It seems that the springy contacts in the connector are just a little too deep for an IC's leads to be securely held and the IC would pop back out when I let go of it. The same happened when I tried an IC socket. Otherwise, it works great for long-leaded discrete components. So I'll just use it as an "add-on" breadboard. ps: I guess you could solder on lead extentions to an IC socket and keep that socket handy to use with the breadboard.

[johnfromnj]

Good idea for all the homebrewer's out there. Those breadboards from Radio Shack are expensive, with a little modding, you could customize them for just about any project.

[Seifpic]

Nice idea, I would of never thought of that..

[cabie62]

Why not use SCSI connectors ? and use the cable too. You could use a 2" piece of SCSI cable stack 8 connectors, one right next to the other and have a total of 16 X 50 pins in 16 pin rows.

[Jimwright]

I will never throw away a (whole) 9V battery again! Why didn't I think of that?

[LEEKA_IDHAM]

Great idea bro. Now the rest of us can start from here and build our own boards at a larger scale since most of us seem to have tons of junk IDE cables. I also suggest using a colored (maybe yellow) thin-tipped marker pen to mark the bridged groups pins from the top of the IDE jack. this way it would be easier to distinguish the bridges from top when electronics start to obscure most of the surface.

[kraM]

damn i just threw alot of these away when i moved... now i need to find some more so i can make me a bread board, and here i was thinking about buying one soon

[agis68]

i can supply you with a cardboards of them if you want! By the way nice project and smart cause breadboards cost a lot

[cowtipper97]

Me too!! i'm really mad that i did that now that i know a good use for them!

[profpat]

Very good idea, now i can recycle lots of ide cable off my junk bins!! more power and imaginations to Instructables!!!

[emergencydpt.com]

Great project. Points for simplicity and repurposing something getting thrown away. You go dude!

[Yerboogieman]

i absolutely loved this idea but its just so hard to keep the solder on the pins after it dries, it'll chip or fall off

[stncilr]

make sure that when you finish your solder that it is atually cone correctly and not ust a cold solder, because cold solders are known to chip off and such

[stone3408]

Try using some extra flux. Also be sure to use the small piece of copper wire to bride the pins first and then solder. I suppose that it would be possible that diffrent ages of IDE cables are made of diffrent materials. If that is the case I would also suggest trying a diffrent set of cables.

[godanimal]

what is a bread board and what does it do ??

[stone3408]

As pictured above its for building circuits without having to solder them together. It actually mechanically connects the parts.

[tinbin]

Love it! I need some breadboard to try a project tonight, but don't have time to get to Maplins... gonna try this one, thanks dude! Will it take an IC?

[learningmaster]

good gob now ill do this right now with my 11 cables *fav*

[Bongmaster]

nice : i used a plug for a power rail on my breadboard :) might do this for a small breadboard or make more power rails :D

[JCru]

This is an awesome instructible. And to think I was going to buy a breadboard for small projects...This works so better! Thanks!

[thepsymaster]

Wow! Why have I never thought of this before?? Such a simple but effective idea, well done :)