What does PATA 1 x ATA100 up to 2 Devices mean on the Motherboard specs?

[LW07]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813121035
This motherboard says it has 1 x PATA, and it says up to 2 devices. What does that mean? Sorry, I really don't know what that means. I'm kinda interested in getting that board, but all I have is 2 PATA drives(a Maxtor 80Gb and a Seagate 160GB drive), and my CD-drive.

Will I have to buy a SATA drive if I want to get that mobo, or will I be able to use my CD drive and one of my Hard drives?

 

[Peter]

It means exactly what it says - one PATA connector, which inherently means support for two drives. Not three.

Choose a different mainboard, use only two of your three devices, or retire your hard disks in favor of a SATA drive.

 

[supremelaw]

You can always install an ATA-133 or ATA-100 IDE
controller in one of the PCI slots, and cable one of
your HDDs to that controller. These are now quite
inexpensive.

To run Windows Setup, you'll need to cable your
optical drive to the PATA ribbon cable that connects
to the motherboard.

Be sure, before you buy that board, that the PATA
port has "native" support in the BIOS, because
the P965 chipset does not come with PATA / IDE support.

Some recent LGA-775 motherboards require
an IDE device driver to be extracted from
a Support CD that comes in the motherboard
package. But, this causes real problems
if one cables an optical drive to such a port,
and tries to run Windows Setup but without
"native" IDE support in the BIOS.


Forewarned is forearmed!


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/