Cable select redux

After building PCs for three years, I thought that the cable select option for connecting IDE drives was an old useless feature. Not any more, as this comprehensive page on PCGuide explains.

... the traditional way of doing cable select was a total mess, which was why it was never widely adopted. The key reason for this mess was--once again--lack of standardization. I rather expected cable select to eventually wither away. However, when the 80-conductor Ultra DMA cable was introduced, the cable select feature was much improved, changing the potential of this feature.

However, given the current move to SATA the rebirth of cable select may be shortlived.