Round cables are often as good as a flat ribbon cable. One of the issues is the design took the imperfect properties of the flat cable into consideration when the specification was written.

In an effort to improve cooling and reduce the "spaghetti bowl" inside my PC, I'm considering making my own (shorter) IDE cables. Are there reasons, such as timing considerations, why I shouldn't ...

In a PC, a 34-wire ribbon connects the floppy drive (if present) to the motherboard. A 40-wire cable connects the IDE (ATA) CD drive, and an 80-wire cable is used for the IDE (ATA) hard disks.