Painted Ribbon Cable

For floppy and IDE cables, the "round" ones out there are not really round, but rather ribbon cables stuffed into a round sheath. Some might actually have individual strands (as with some higher end round cables like Antec), but cheap ones are often just regular ribbon cables that are crushed and compacted into a round sheath. Therefore, I really dislike these cheaper round IDE cables. They just look and feel cheap. The quality round cables are rarely sold in a simple black color; even the pure black ones are not as simple looking as I'd prefer.

However, I've always enjoyed the look of the black, flat ribbon cables Asus includes with their motherboards. They seem so much more elegant and aesthetically pleasing when compared to "round" ribbon cables. Flat ribbon cables also have the added ability to lay flat against a surface, and make folds when changing direction or position. More importantly, flat ribbon cables can be shortened to any length, because adding a connector is simple with the right crimper and connectors.

Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to buy black ribbon cable that is flat. I've tried to buy them individually, and I've tried to buy it in bulk. The consumer is out of luck here.

After researching and dumping too much of my time into something trivial to others, I found a simple solution that some have already known. Vinyl spray paint. I purchased a can of gloss black vinyl & carpet spray paint from my local automotive store, then pulled out a spare 80-conductor IDE cable to give it a shot. After taping off the connectors with blue painter's tape, I discovered that vinyl paint is really the best way to go! It bonds to the ribbon cable, looks better than the no-gloss black ribbon cables from Asus, and doesn't flake or peel when bent, twisted, and scratched. Whoot!

Here's a pic of the one I painted (80-conductor, dual drive) with Duplicolor Vinyl & Fabric Gloss Black, compared to an Asus cable (40-conductor, single drive). I also painted the various color connectors black with a paint marker, except on their pin side where they won't be visible.




Sleeving

As with any PC mod project, sleeving always seems to take longer for me than any other step. May be it's because I put so much love into my cabling, or may be it's because I now solder each connector when splicing or shortening cables. Either way, this step took even longer for this project because the black sleeving I used wasn't 'black' enough for me. It is nice sleeving, but one layer doesn't seem to black-out the color of the cables enough for my tastes. So all of my cables have two layers of sleeving.

Here's the results: