Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!texsun!letni!merch!cpe!adaptex!neese
From: neese@adaptex.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: What is IDE??
Message-ID: <6100025@adaptex>
Date: 2 Nov 89 14:54:00 GMT
References: <1821@intvax.UUCP>
Lines: 32
Nf-ID: #R:intvax.UUCP:1821:adaptex:6100025:000:1606
Nf-From: adaptex.UUCP!neese    Nov  2 08:54:00 1989


>CompuAdd just opened a store in NM (darn, have to pay sales tax now)
>and since I'm in the market for a 8088 Clone for the inlaws, I stopped
>in for a look.  Their 10MHz 8088 has the floppy controller and some 
>sort of hard disk interface on the motherboard.  They call their
>HDI an "Integrated Drive Electronics" interface.  Looking at their
>catalog, I found out that Miniscribe and Western Digital both make
>these drives, although I was unable to find ANY other Manufacturers or
>mail-order companies offering them.
>
>Is IDE just a mareting tool used by CompuAdd to channel purchases of
>HDs through them exclusively?  Does it actually use a "standard"
>interface (SCSI or ESDI?).   I must admit I've not kept up with
>HDs since I prefer to not tempt myself with anything better than my
>(gasp) ST225.
>
>Thanks in advance for any light shed on this issue.

IDE drives have the disk controller built into them.  Much like a SCSI drive.
The only thing needed to drive the disk is a simple port I/O decoder.  This
makes for a very chep hard disk implementation.  Also, the IDE drives are
RLL encoded, so performance is above par as compared to standard ST506/412
disks that are MFM encoded.  Manufacturers include Quantum, Imprimis(CDC),
Conner, Miniscribe, WD and some others who haven't released them yet.  As
far as distributors go, it will be a while before all the vendors get
thier drives into that channel, as they are concetrating on the OEM'S
and supoer VAR's.

			Roy Neese
			Adaptec Central Field Applications Engineer
			UUCP @ {texbell,attctc}!cpe!adaptex!neese
				merch!adaptex!neese