14 Aug
2008
14 Aug
'08
10:36 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Using a UDMA cable can create some real problems with
older systems.
Indeed - or newer ones... (I've got a DVD-RW drive here which randomly
disappears from the bus when used with a UDMA cable)
IDE's pretty much been a mess from Day One. For
example, I've got an
early IDE drive that flips the endian-sense on the word pair returned
for the total number of sectors on the drive.
I had one of those, too - I think it was a Maxtor, but could be wrong (drive
long since tossed). Circa 1994 I was writing an IDE driver for a fledgling OS,
and it was amazing how many quirks there were out there with drives of that
period. Funny how SCSI seemed to get a bad name for that kind of thing, yet
IDE's reputation stood intact despite all the inconsistencies.
It was not uncommon
for drives from two different manufacturers not to work as master-
slave on the same cable.
... and yet sometimes such a pair would work the other way around.
(and don't get me started on the manufacturers who used microscopic jumpers
which had a habit of falling off at random moments... Quantum were bad for
this, I recall)
cheers
Jules