What is the function of a computer ribbon cable?

Answer 1

Ribbon cables in a computer are mostly used for carrying data between devices. Sometimes they are used to carry supply voltages as well, but since they are usually lightweight, they are more commonly used for carrying data and control signals. The most common use is for floppy drives and hard drives. However, they can be used for connecting between different circuit boards, such as a mezzanine card - a type of controller card that has two circuit boards. There were also likely used in older mainframe computers since they contained so many circuit boards. On older Apple computers, they were sometimes used as printer cables too.

Answer 2

A ribbon cable is any wide cable with many wires. In a computer, these carry signals between components. For instance, a PATA hard drive uses a 40 pin cable (though many have 80 wires, with the extra wires acting as ground wires to help isolate any signal noise). Those wires carry the data to and from the hard drive, as well as any control and synchronization signals needed.

Answer 3

The purpose of the ribbon cables is typically to transmit data. Ribbon cables are used to transmit parallel data while single-line, round cables transmit serial data.