17 May
2013
17 May
'13
1:58 p.m.
On 05/17/2013 04:12 PM, David Riley wrote:
Unless you have a microcontroller that has CML-based gigabit transceivers
(and some do, specifically usually for either PCIe or SATA), "lucky" is a
vast understatement. But SATA *is* pretty ATA-like once you get past the
physical layer; it's essentially ATA encapsulated over a different
transport layer.
We're talking about ATA at different levels. ATA takes (in LBA mode) a
block address, chops it up into very odd groups of bits, and crams those
groups into half a dozen little sections of registers.
And don't get me started on the whole "ATA is better than SCSI because it
doesn't need terminators!" crap that n00bs spill all the time. ;)
No technical person beyond the basement hobbyist stage would design such an
interface. But it all but dominated the low-end computer market for the
better part of two decades.
Once you get beyond that very low-level stuff, ATA isn't too bad.
Amateurish and simplistic, but not too bad.
True. I'm just not too fond of IDE. ;)
Oh, IDE blows dog, there's no question about that amongst people who have
any technical clue whatsoever. But it IS easy to interface to...I've even
done it (as have many others) with a microcontroller and a few dozen lines of
code. Try doing that with (for example) SATA...one would be lucky to even
get the physical layer talking. There is *nothing* ATA-like about SATA
beyond the name. Of course, initializing the transceiver usually takes
more code than the entire ATA driver did, so there's that.
Yes. ;)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA