13 Aug
2012
13 Aug
'12
11:59 p.m.
On 08/14/2012 01:34 AM, Tothwolf wrote:
I'm talking about its technical implementation, not the business
implications. ATA was very much at the "end of its road" in terms of
its design by, say, 1993 or so. We saw how long it lasted after that,
for no good reason.
Meh... You could say the same thing about single ended SCSI though.
Sure...then we moved to LVD.
>>
[...run eight parallel data pairs...]
> The problem is that in general you can't [as speeds rise, skew and
> crosstalk get bad]. That's why we have gone SATA rather than PATA.
Well that was one of the reasons. ;) ATA/IDE was one of the
worst-designed interconnects in the history of this industry. Even
the PC weeniez knew it had to go. SATA, for all of its faults, is a
godsend!
A godsend...to hardware makers and others who benefit from forced
obsolescence. The
reason SCSI was able to last is that it continued to evolve. Parallel
ATA on the other hand, evolved differently, mainly because of the
consumer computer market.
That was one force, but I'd say its evolutionary path was forced upon
it by its architecture. There really weren't very many ways for it to
evolve and still be ATA. The move from CHS to LBA was a huge, huge
change...and there really weren't too many others that could be made.
Using stuff like the Chip Select lines for additional bits of block
address is a right naughty kludge, to say the least.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA