Goodbye IDE.....Hello Serial ATA!

[Lord Evermore]

abrasion: the ATA33/66/100 standards call for the master to be the end device on the cable (or at least, that's the way instructions with drives and boards say to do it, dunno if the actual standard specifies it). Anybody trying to put together their system properly would want to arrange their drives so that it can be done that way. Aside from that, there's still difficulty even if you put the master hard drive on the middle connector and a CD drive on the end, simply due to cable length limitations, and some really badly designed cables that don't have the keyed connectors oriented properly.

SerialATA can't make mobos cheaper anytime soon, as far as lower pin count. They'll continue to have both parallel and Serial connectors on them for a very long time, meaning MORE traces are needed to maintain backward compatibility (assuming that optical drives get SerialATA interfaces anytime soon, there's been no mention that I've seen about the ATAPI standard working with SerialATA natively).

The spec for the Springdale chipset only mentions two SerialATA channels. Only two devices run from the native SerialATA southbridge. Intel doesn't seem to expect optical drives to get SerialATA for quite some time, it seems, since one would expect them to be looking ahead and make the southbridge capable of supporting at least 4 (to at least match the current ATA capabilities), if they expected anybody to need support for more than just a couple of hard drives.

One wonders whether those converters may become more readily available that allow a parallel ATA drive to connect to a SerialATA port, and whether an ATAPI optical drive will work with them.

 

[AbRASiON]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Does serial ATA mean that we'll get CD drives etc on serial ATA as well, or will we end up with IDE and serial both on a mobo for HDD's and CD drives?
Plus, would serial ATA mean you could have, say 4 connectors for hdd's rather than the 2 currently offered, since the connectors are smaller. Mobo makers might be able to squeeze more on the motherboard.

You should do some reading before asking such questions.


Eventually ALL pata devices will be serial ATA.
They will most likely have 2-3 or 4 connectors on a "standard" motherboard - this will result in only 2-3 or 4 devices as you can ONLY do 1 device per cable unlike PATA which is 2.

 

[AbRASiON]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
abrasion: the ATA33/66/100 standards call for the master to be the end device on the cable (or at least, that's the way instructions with drives and boards say to do it, dunno if the actual standard specifies it). Anybody trying to put together their system properly would want to arrange their drives so that it can be done that way. Aside from that, there's still difficulty even if you put the master hard drive on the middle connector and a CD drive on the end, simply due to cable length limitations, and some really badly designed cables that don't have the keyed connectors oriented properly.

I have a tonne of cables - this has never concerned me - I never have to twist or bend my cables anymore it's just a straight line from board - up to hdd - up to cdrom.
As for the placement, I've never heard of that ever, and even if it is true, it makes no difference on any machine I've worked on.

SerialATA can't make mobos cheaper anytime soon, as far as lower pin count. They'll continue to have both parallel and Serial connectors on them for a very long time, meaning MORE traces are needed to maintain backward compatibility (assuming that optical drives get SerialATA interfaces anytime soon, there's been no mention that I've seen about the ATAPI standard working with SerialATA natively).

I agree it's a shame, although I think in 12 months time you might see the first serial ATA only board and I bet they start making the reverse adapters which go the other way (s/ata to p/ata drives) just incase someone needs that.

The spec for the Springdale chipset only mentions two SerialATA channels. Only two devices run from the native SerialATA southbridge. Intel doesn't seem to expect optical drives to get SerialATA for quite some time, it seems, since one would expect them to be looking ahead and make the southbridge capable of supporting at least 4 (to at least match the current ATA capabilities), if they expected anybody to need support for more than just a couple of hard drives.

they may opt for an onboard controller also.
but this only confirms more of what I said earlier - to milk the consumer many board manu's will be supplying 1/2/3 ports on boards so they can charge more for aftermarket controllers - until it becomes a "standard" to give 4
much like "back in the old days" there was only 1 ide port on a controller for quite a while....

One wonders whether those converters may become more readily available that allow a parallel ATA drive to connect to a SerialATA port, and whether an ATAPI optical drive will work with them.

They don't have much use really if we have more devices than we do have controllers (initially) also i'd like to see them under 10$ US but that's a bit of a dream I figure.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Well, even with only 2 ports available integrated in the southbridge, MOST people only have two devices in their computers, a single optical drive and a hard drive. An adapter would be useful in those instances.

It'd be a shame to have integrated SATA as well as an add-in (chip on motherboard) controller, especially given the difficulties people seem to have using optical devices on add-in controllers currently. Having to put the faster SerialATA hard drives on an add-in controller while an optical drive that's never been limited by the bus gets the integrated controller (of course that's already the case with RAID controllers on motherboards, but it's not quite as bad due to ATA100 limitations anyway).

 

[Shazam]

I have a tonne of cables - this has never concerned me - I never have to twist or bend my cables anymore it's just a straight line from board - up to hdd - up to cdrom.

Many, many years ago I actually did have an IDE cable where the connections were keyed upside down - I threw away that cable in about 10 seconds

 

[Lord Evermore]

I've had many cables that were keyed backward. Perfect for if I happened to be using a case which had drive bays above the PSU, rather difficult otherwise. But IDE cables aren't something I always have just laying around, unlike some other cables. They were all older 40 conductor cables, which I used when connecting CD drives or older hard drives, and never wanted to waste a good 80 conductor cable on that use, especially if I was rebuilding a system for someone else and not myself.

I'd rather think that twisting a SerialATA cable around in whatever direction necessary will be a lot easier than a ribbon cable. No difficulties with folding it over itself, no having to deal with the middle connector getting in the way. They're a little thicker than an IDE cable, but flexible in ways that give it an advantage over ribbon cable because twisting a ribbon cable to change direction is more inconvenient.