EIDE Vs. IDE

[Radical Dreamer]

Whats the the difference between the 2?

[Knucklehead]

The original IDE supported only two drives. EIDE supports four (or more) drives and ATAPI drives. It has multiword data tranfer capabilities in DMA burst mode and other enhancements. It's still generally referred to as IDE.

[Radical Dreamer]

So, a Promise tech ATA/100 will do fine for hard drives and cd-roms? I am wondering because I ordered before I researched, bad idea I know but I cant reverse it now.

[Platypus]

An ATA/100 controller should be backwards compatable with older spec devices.

The original IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) or ATA (AT Attachment) specification was introduced by Compaq to standardise the hard drive interface. Enhanced IDE or ATA-2 incorporated enhancements like CHS Translation (often called LBA) to overcome the stupid error that caused the 504M capacity limit.

[Knucklehead]

The instructions with my Promise Fasttrak100 card says it works with Ultra ATA 100, 66, 33, EIDE, and Fast AATA-2 drives supporting multi-word DMA. The ASUS A7V manual is similar, but specifies also PIO Modes 3 & 4 and Bus Master IDE DMA Mode 2. It specifically recommend putting only Ultra DMA 66 and 100 drives on the Promise controller and all other drives on the Secondary Controller (non-ATA 100). This seems to indicate that the Promise controller won't support early IDE ATA 1 or PIO 1 & 2 drives, such as most Zip 100 drives.

[Radical Dreamer]

K, now I am really confused, I'll just tell ya some more on the story

I have an ATA/66 HDD and a cd/rw, and a DVD-Rom, and a ZIP-100 and I bought a ide controller card that said

this:

2IDE Harddisk connectors support Ultra ATA/100 protocols IDE, Fast-ATA-2 standards cmpatible

should I be able to connect them all to this card?

Sorry bout dragging this out but I know jack about HDD's

[tablesalt]

Are you using a Promise FastTrack100 or Ultra100? The FastTrack is an IDE RAID controller and does not support devices such as ATAPI CD-ROM's and ZIP drives. The Ultra100 is a PCI ATA100 controller which will support all these devices.

[Radical Dreamer]

Originally posted by Compaqman:
Are you using a Promise FastTrack100 or Ultra100? The FastTrack is an IDE RAID controller and does not support devices such as ATAPI CD-ROM's and ZIP drives. The Ultra100 is a PCI ATA100 controller which will support all these devices.

Its the ultra 100, thanks for the help

[Knucklehead]

You would still be better to put the Zip on the standard IDE controller. Put the HDD on the Primary ATA 100, the CD & CDRW will probably work fine on either controller. You may want to plan ahead and leave space for future harddrives.

[Lycia]

Originally posted by timgottier:
You would still be better to put the Zip on the standard IDE controller. Put the HDD on the Primary ATA 100, the CD & CDRW will probably work fine on either controller. You may want to plan ahead and leave space for future harddrives.

I would go further and have only Hardrives on the ATA100 Controller and put your CD-Roms and CDRWs on the onboard IDE Controller.