Jon, The tape goes on the hard plastic connector (that connects to the drive) at the end of the cable. You want the tape to reduce the inner space so that it forces the metal pins to make better contact, being careful not to place the tape over the metal pins themselves else you'll have no connection. I basically inserted the end of the tape strip into the thin slot of the connector, than wrapped around a couple of mm onto the outside of the connector. **BUT** while the trick allowed me to finally see the drive from Disk Utility, I never got it beyond that. In the end I purchased a replacement for the cable and the problem was solved. B

I tried Jose's trick. It was good enough to show the drive from Disk Utility (starting from the install DVD). Which is better than before when it was not even showing the drive. But that's about it, I couldn't get to boot up. I then ordered the SATA cable (as described above in this thread) installed it, and voila, the MacBook Pro is up and running again.

In step #8 the two small screws were very tight in my computer. The Phillips #00 was too large and damaging the screws. I changed to a Phillips #000 applied substantial pressure and voila, the screws came off.

Reassembly: placing the IR sensor cable (the one you"peeled off" in step #9) is a bit tricky. Start from the side opposite the IR sensor (the side with the two small screws of step 8) and press first along the short vertical side and then across towards the IR section. There should be a little left for a vertical section at the IR sensor end.