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From: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: What is IDE?
Message-ID: <2553@sixhub.UUCP>
Date: 10 Dec 90 02:39:21 GMT
References: <20104@rouge.usl.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Distribution: usa
Organization: *IX Public Access UNIX, Schenectady NY
Lines: 25


  IDE has the controller on the disk drive, and the interface between
the drive and the bus is a glorified parallel port. The claim is that
the noise is lower because the cable lengths are short, but the reason
is that there is more profit in it. The drive manufacturer gets the
profit from the controller and if you have more than one drive you get
to pay for more than one controller.

  The interface costs virtually nothing to add to the motherboard, so
vendors add it and call it a feature. If you want to use full size disks
be very sure that you can disable the "feature."

  For one drive the total system cost is probably lower than an
equivalent esdi, so it's not a liabinity if you can live with just one
of the little drives. If you need capacity in the GB range, you lose.

  Note that I saw the CDC 766MB drives on year end clearance in one of
the mags for $1450. That's less than a pair of 208MB IDE, so you really
pay for capacity. And 1.2GB for <$2k... wish I hadn't just bought a pair
of 320MBs.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me