(mail from late Dec. 2003)
" Hi Mike,
When I upgraded from my G4 to my G5 i took my 120GB Seagate (PATA) drive with me in hopes of trading it for a SATA (serial ATA). That didn't happen so I decided to try installing it in the G5 off the PATA interface for the optical drive. The interface is supposed to be ATA-100 so after confirming that it would work in place of the optical drive, on the single drive cable, I got a dual drive cable and a power splitter (Y-adapter).

I installed the drive in the open hard drive bay, connected the cables and everything works. I use it primarily as a clone (backup drive) for my SATA drive.

I used one of the "round" IDE cables. It seemed to have greater spacing between the master and slave connectors. (Standard specs I believe note a 6" max master/slave spacing though.) Don't know who made it, it was rather generic. I cut the sheathing off the cable between master and slave connectors to fit around the bulkhead between the optical drive and hard drive to prevent pinching it in the side panel. It's not as pretty as stock, but at least I have a good backup now.

I took a notch out of the bulkhead, but in the end it wasn't necessary.
Vern"

(It's not easy to tell from the photos, but it appears that he's connecting what would normally be the Master connector to the logic board, then the slave connector to the optical drive and then the controller connector to the hard drive as the master/slave connector spacing won't normally reach the distance between the optical drive and the HD bay in the G5 tower.)