Thanks for the imput fellas. However Bravo I dont think you took note of my previous posts about going to the comupter store a few times asking for the same thing (lol, they were/are getting sick of me)- maybe you didnt know, but CompUSA is a computer store, and a lot of other stores referred me to it even, namely associates at Best Buy and Circuit City- two people told me to go there. So when I go there, a few different people that work there on a few diff nights told me that they had never seen a "TRUE" 40 pin robbon. They were only really named that way, but that all of them (that they had seen) had one of the middle holes blocked off. Now different people kept telling me "well just find one without the hole filled in..." this of course didnt help much when the best source (apparently) tell me the stupid thing doesnt exist.
Regarding power delivery, someone linked me to a PDF where another member thoughtfully showed a pic of exactly how to do it*, this has helped immensely, but that only left the ribbon cable as an issue to deal with.
However what bravo said was news to me, that OLD ribbons actually have 40 pins. The thing is that although you said to simply ask for IDE ribbon cable, they all have this hole in the middle filled in so its not as easy to find as one would think. Maybe the standard has changed Lampdog, because although you said it was easy to find, on a local level for me in south Jersey no one knows what I am talking about. However I feel better because at least I know that they exist, it sucks but if Bravo is right then I think I do have one of the old (skool) ones, lol- oh well. And earwolf your post on Mikeshardware is VERY helpful- especially I am sure for others who are in our predicament to check out! Speaking of others in out predicament, here is a post of that lovely picture illustrating power delivery to the internal ATAPI zip
*
http://www.monoxide.co.uk/zip.pdf
Guess Im gonna have 2 look online for a true 40 pin cable, thanks for the collective assistance
