What's the controller needed for?

[Greekguys]

I see these things called controllers. Ultra 100 ATA/100 from Promise Technologies is one of them. What's their purpose? http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

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Captain, steady as she goes...

[andyswork@beci.net]

The Ulttra 100 ata/100 is a pci card that lets you add 4 more devices that are idee.

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One day I will be a pro, Thanks Andy

[Greekguys]

Ok sounds good...Now why would I want to do that? Is this more for business purposes? I don't see much use for a home PC... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif

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Captain, steady as she goes...

[iisbob]

..Now why would I want to do that? Is this more for business purposes? I don't see much use for a home PC...

How about all those music files you ( or your childern ) download? or those albums full of pictures you wish to archive or store? How about that video you took of your son's/daughter's graduation? Most video's take at least 4-10GB's of storage even after they're compressed before you can rip them to VCD or DVD.

Granted, most people are just fine with a 30-60GB hardrive-but for back up or serious music/video editing, you need as much storage space as you can get.

Or just for bragging rights! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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iisbob
"Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It's not fair that some men should be happier than others."
-- Oscar Wilde

[BigBlue66]

Hey,

Most of the newer harddrives nowadays are ATA100, or sometimes referred to as UDMA 100, or even ATA133 and ATA160.

If you have an older computer, the motherboard IDE channels will not support this faster transfer rate. (ATA100) So, in order for an older computer to be able to use the harddrive to its fullest capability, the controller card is used.

Another reason is that older computers' BIOSes will not recognize the larger harddrives nowadays. The contoller card overcomes that problem, too.

If you have a recently built computer, you shouldn't have to worry about BIOS limits or motherboard IDE channel limitations. But, if your computer is older, but you want the newest fastest largest harddrive that you can get, then you will have to use the controller card.

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif OK?

Big Blue 66


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Life = Karma, or is it, Karma = Life?

[rond36]

You can also use an IDE controler card to add a newer harddrive to an older PC even if your motherboard BIOS doesn't support the drive because the card has its own BIOS.

Lets say you have an old P II with an 440LX motherboard and an 8GB harddrive and the drive quits so you go out and buy a new 40GB UDMA 100.
Your BIOS doesn't support a drive this large or this fast.
You have three choices
[list=1]
Overlay the drive (and loose considerable performance in PIO mode)
Go out and buy a new motherboard and processor to support the new drive
Buy a PCI IDE controler card for $20 and be able to use the full capacity and speed of the drive[/list=a]
I think I would use the controler card option!

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Alright who messed it up this time!

[This message has been edited by rond36 (edited 11-23-2001).]

[integral]

I remember back it olden days musta' been 'round '92 when you had to buy and IDE controller card because the old fashioned 286 mobos didn't have built in controlers, bet I could dig one out of the box of goodies in my closet!

[Gallaeglagh]

Adding more drives would take quite a bit of power. how would one know if the power supply was adaquete? I was thinking of adding a couple fat hard drives to my system.

Current setup

350 watt power supply
MSI [MS-6380} mobo
Athlon 4 @ 1.47 Ghz
GeForce 2 64
Soundblaster 5.1
D-Link NIC
generic floppy
30 Gig WD and 60 Gig Maxtor
Plexwriter 24x
Kenwood 72x
256 DDR ram

Would I have enough power to add a controller card and 2 more hds?




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"It's all one song," Neil Young

[Whyzman]

Hello Greekguys,

I read through the posts and then again at your original question. It seems the answers might have skewed a little.
I see these things called controllers....What's their purpose?
And, then with reference to the
Ultra 100 ATA/100 from Promise Technologies


I hope I'm tracking with your original question. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

A Controller is a device that controls the transfer of data. The ATA100 architecture allows for data transfer up to 100 mega bits per second. This is much faster than the previos ATA66/33 controllers @33% potential boost.

In the case of the Ultra ATA100, some boards, like my ASUS A7V133 use a Promise Controller to control the data transfer. As some pointed out, the ATA100 controller can be purchased separately and installed in a PCI slot. On my particular ASUS board the ATA100 Promise controller has separate connectors and is an integral part of the MB. It allows up to 4 devices to be plugged in that meet the ATA100 requirements. I also have the standard IDE/EIDE controllers, i.e., Primary and Secondary channels.

If I'm in line with your original question...now would be a good time for those in the know to address the differences with the ATA100/66/33 controllers and their relationship to the speeds available through the IDE/EIDE controllers.

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May all your dealings in life be win/win!

Whyzman

[Whyzman]

Just got off the horn with mjc so I thought I'd add just a little bit more.

The reason for the separate ATA100 controller has to do with backwards compatible devices. We just had a similar post where it was noted that a channel's data transfer can be conjested by the slowest moving device's transfer rate.

Kinda like a Sunday driver. If you had a new ATA100 capable HDD and had it sharing an IDE channel with a tortise ATAPI device, like a CD-ROM, all data would transfer at the CD-ROM's transfer rate.

Separating out the much faster ATA100 HDD's, using a separate controller, allows them to pedal to the metal, rather than running with a governor on 'em! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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May all your dealings in life be win/win!

Whyzman

[This message has been edited by Whyzman (edited 12-06-2001).]

[andreadebiase]

Another reason for having a controller is that some people might want a CD burner and an internal Zip drive. In this case you have the CD-Rom and CD-burner (the "slow" drives) on the second channel and the hard drive (the fast drive) on the first channel of your mobo. Unless you have a RAID you have another theoretically another free "spot" on that first channel for a "slave" drive that could be a Zip but you don`t want to do that because the Zip would slow down your Hard drive. So with a controller you can have your Zip drive alone and separated from your hard drive, allowing it to go at the fastest speed.


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#!@$*%.....just format the damn C:

[iisbob]

..A Controller is a device that controls the transfer of data. The ATA100 architecture allows for data transfer up to 100 mega bits per second.

Actually the standard is Mega bytes per second-big difference. And it's a burst rate data transfer-not a sustained rate ( you only have 2MB cache on these drives so you can't have a continous flow of 50X that data?! )

Maxtor (http://www.maxtor.com) has great detailed specs on their drives that will give you a little more detail on how the IDE controller interacts with the data bus to the CPU. The problem with today's interface is that the drive can transfer data faster thean the motherboard can give it to the CPU, hence there is a new standard being developed called ATA133 serial-which should theoretically allow for sustained data transfer in the high MB's range.


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iisbob
""I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."
Mark Twain

[iropnman]

Originally posted by Gallaeglagh:
Adding more drives would take quite a bit of power. how would one know if the power supply was adaquete? I was thinking of adding a couple fat hard drives to my system.

Current setup

350 watt power supply
MSI [MS-6380} mobo
Athlon 4 @ 1.47 Ghz
GeForce 2 64
Soundblaster 5.1
D-Link NIC
generic floppy
30 Gig WD and 60 Gig Maxtor
Plexwriter 24x
Kenwood 72x
256 DDR ram

Would I have enough power to add a controller card and 2 more hds?


WITH A 350 WATT POWER SUPPLY YOU WILL REALLY NEED TO GO TO A 400 WATT POWER SUPPLY TO RUN TWO MORE HARD DRIVES WITH WHAT YOU HAVEIN THAT COMPUTER ALLREADY A 350 WILL RUN IT FOR AWHILE BUT THEN IT WILL START HAVING PROBLEMS LIKE SHUTTING DOWN BY ITSELF AND REBOOTING AND MANY OTHERS.HOPE THIS WILL HELP OUT IRONMAN

[BigBlue66]

Hey Irondude,

Um, could ya give us a break and use the Post Reply button on the bottom of the page? And, please don't use capital letters. It's kinda hard to read, plus we all think you're yelling at us. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

Cheers,

BB 66

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Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
- Pamela Vault Starr